The Huguenots Who Fled by Starlight

In October 1685, King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, stripping French Protestants of every legal protection overnight. Soldiers ransacked churches. Children were seized to be raised Catholic. Pastors faced execution if they did not leave within fifteen days.

Under cover of darkness, hundreds of thousands of Huguenot families gathered what they could carry and slipped across borders into Switzerland, Prussia, the Netherlands, and beyond. Among them was a young silversmith named Daniel Marot, who fled with his family from Paris with little more than his tools and his faith. He would eventually reshape the decorative arts of the Dutch Golden Age — but on the night he left, he was simply a father protecting his household from a king's rage.

The parallels to Matthew 2 are striking. Herod, like Louis, wielded absolute power and saw no cost too great to eliminate a perceived threat. Joseph, warned in a dream, rose in the darkness and carried his family into Egypt — not toward comfort, but toward survival. The Son of God entered the world not in triumph but as a refugee, dependent on a carpenter's obedience and the mercy of a foreign land.

God does not always remove His people from danger. Sometimes He walks them straight through it. The Almighty who could have struck Herod dead instead chose a dusty road to Egypt, reminding us that divine protection often looks less like a fortress and more like a father's faithful, frightened steps into the night.