Wednesday 6th January 2021: Follow The Star

 

In my teens I spent most Thursday nights, in term time, staying over at my grandparents. It was always a fun evening full of good food and discussion.  My grandfather was a gentle guide in my life.  He gave me 50 pence a week, but only after I washed his car every Saturday morning.  He bought me a book every month, yet it was always the next instalment of a Junior encyclopaedia! 

On those Thursday evenings I was encouraged to go out into the darkness and look up at the stars with his binoculars.  It became a tradition; a memory that pops up now, uninvited yet always welcome, every Epiphany.

Those Magi, real or imagined, are deliberately in the nativity story as Seekers after Truth from a faith system outside of Israel.  The Christ Child was a gift for the world and those bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh were amongst the first to bow in worship.  This was not so much truth speaking to power, as power kneeling before Truth.

I’m full of admiration for these oriental seekers.  Their determination inspires me, for surely theirs was a fraught and frustrating journey; much of it without a known destination.  Yet, aren’t the best journeys always like that?  We make them in faith, and they take a certain courage and conviction.

Like you I’m very conscious at the start of this New Year of the huge angst and fear that has already characterised the first six days of 2021.  Our journey back to wholeness is a slow one, yet a star of hope and love still beckons us on, and maybe the darkest night is always just before the dawn.

May you today, know God’s blessing in all you do.

 

Ian