The Gift of the Magi

Greetings everyone. As the holiday season rapidly descends upon us, there is a lot of buzz in the air. Christmas is a great time to share and reflect upon your faith. In that spirit, I would like to share some thoughts about one of my favorite Christmas stories, that of the Three Wisemen, or as they are sometimes known, the Magi. After you finish the story, hark back to the days when people used to comment on the blogs. I get sort of lonely talking to myself. : ) Enjoy!

The story of the Magi is almost a perfect analogy for Christianity. God told the wise men to follow the star, to go where it led them. And they obeyed the command. They went on their long journey with the star as their guide. They actively pursued their destination.

The story is valuable in that it teaches us how we should respond to God's commands: readily and with conviction. It also shows us one very valuable aspect of the relationship we should have with Jesus: we should be looking for Him. But it has another purpose. To the unbelieving world, Christianity is much like this story. We believe God has given us a goal, a finish line, and we spend our lives trying to get there. At the end of the line is the life that Jesus lived. Perfection. To be without sin. This widely circulated view of Christianity is not entirely false, but it is flawed. It leads to a belief system that can only create hypocrites, a system of faith where the only possible outcome is failure. Paul tells us this, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," Romans 3:23. The truth is, however, that Christianity is the only system of faith that leads to total victory. Victory over shame, guilt, lust, anger, pride, greed…in a word, evil. That is because to be a Christian means to truly understand the story of the Magi.

In the story God commands the wise men to follow the star. The star itself represents the embodiment of God. Ultimate perfection. The goal of Christians everywhere according to the secular worldview. If we take a closer look at the story though, we notice some key things the wise men did not do. They did not start testing different propulsion systems, they began getting their affairs in order. They did not start hammering together sheets of metal, they packed their bags and loaded their wagons. They did not start calculating the distance between them and the star, they tried to estimate how many miles of ground they would need to cover. Why? Because they understood what God really wanted from them. Not to journey to the star, that would be ridiculous, impossible, it never crossed their minds. Instead, they were to use the star as a guide to reach the real destination God had in mind, the manger.

This is what the world does not understand about Christianity that Christians should. Our goal is not perfection. The Father and the Son both know that humans are not and will never be perfect, at least not in this life. The Father kicked us out of Eden for our imperfections, and the Son died because of them. It is a false premise that Christians should be perfect by the time they die. It was too late the day we were born. Sin is in our blood. Our goal is not the star. Instead, perfection, the perfect will of Jesus Christ for our lives, is to serve as a guide on our journey, not a finish line. We should keep our eyes on that star always; reorienting ourselves and changing direction whenever we get off course, but it should not be our true purpose. The important thing is where the star leads us. As every Christian will find, as the Magi discovered, a life led with an eye on that star, a journey taken with it as a guide, will always lead to the manger, to Jesus Christ, to the real finish line.

By Aaron Blackwell