Sunday morning we were sitting in church. A pretty typical thing for me on a Sunday morning really. In case you were wondering, Sunday was also the 9th day of Christmas. So I got up to read the scripture for the day which was Matthew 2:1-12. It is the part of the story of Jesus' birth that talks about the Magi coming to see him, about how they saw the star in the West and followed it, possibly for two years, in order to worship the King of the Jews that had been born. It is a great story and has a lot of great things in it that we can and should consider.
Yesterday however a thought occurred to me that I had never had before about the star. First of all let me say to you, think about everything you have have heard or seen when it comes to the Star of Bethlehem. What comes to mind? Is it some small pin prick of light that just happens to shine a bit brighter, perhaps like the North star? It seems that on most occasions when we think about this star, or we see a rendering of it it is pretty much a huge shining beacon in the night sky lighting the way not only for the Magi but for the shepherds and even some incoming air traffic. It seems that everyone believes that this star was like a spot light marking the location of where Jesus was for all to see.
And that's fine, and maybe it was that way. But if that were the case, why didn't (or couldn't) Herod and all his advisers see it outside of their city? Maybe it was because they lived in the city and the street lights and office lights were just too bright, I don't know. All I know is that if this star was as big and bright as what we tend to believe, it seems like it should have been hard to miss, and at the least someone should have noticed and maybe pointed it out to Herod so they could investigate. As I thought about this question in the last 36+ hours I have come up with a couple of reasons.
1) Herod and his "people" were blinded to the star. I can't help but wonder if it was a hard heartedness that kept them from seeing this sign from God that he was doing something in their very midst. In Habakkuk 1:5 God says that he is going to be doing a new thing. Herod was not the kind of king who was really hip to doing "new things". I think it is possible that they were blinded in some way to what was going on right there around them. It's the same way that people are today. God can be moving in the very midst of people, and yet some are so hard hearted, so determined not to see or acknowledge Him that they are basically blind to what is being done.
2) They weren't really looking something to happen. When the Magi come to Herod and tell him about the star and why they are there, the first thing Herod does is to call aside his priests and teachers and scribes and ask them about where the Messiah is supposed to be born. They all know the prophecy and tell him where Jesus has been born. Yet even knowing this information it seems that they weren't really looking for something to happen. Again we are this way at times. We have the information, we know what we need to know, and yet we are not really looking for anything to go down, therefore we miss what God is doing.
3) They didn't know what to look FOR. When the Magi arrived they talked about how they had been watching the sky and the stars and had seen this star as a sign that the King of the Jews had been born. These were not men who claimed to follow the One True God as the Jews did. These were people who followed the patterns in the stars and relied on that to navigate through life. Yet in the end, they knew what they were looking for when it came to the star that they saw. They recognized that there was something special going on and they wanted to be a part of it. Herod and the others didn't even seem to know where to start with all this.
So where do we fall in all of this? Are we like Herod who was hard hearted and didn't want to see what God was doing or are we more like the Magi who saw that God was doing something and knew that whatever it was they wanted/needed to be a part of it? That is something that we have to figure out and decide for ourselves. What choice will we make? Peace and Love y'all.
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