² “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”

Matthew 2:2

Dear God, I focused on these verses yesterday, but John Piper is keeping me here a day longer, so I want to take this time with him to sit with the idea of the Magi.

One of the things Piper suggests is that while Luke tells us about the Shepherds, Matthew tells us about the Magi because Matthew is careful to include the Gentiles in his message about Jesus. Jesus’s story opens with these Gentile worshippers, and Matthew ends to book with Jesus sending the disciples out to the world. It’s why I’m here today. Who would I be without you? I don’t even know how to answer that question, but I know you are everything to who I am.

I really like what Piper has to say today. I want to quote part of today’s entry here:

I want to exhort you not to become preoccupied with developing theories that are only tentative in the end and have very little spiritual significance. In fact, I will risk a generalization to warn you: People who are exercised and preoccupied with such things as how the star worked and how the Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah survived the fish and how the moon turns to blood are generally people who have what I call a mentality for the marginal…What is plain concerning this matter of the star is that it is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding magi to the Son of God to worship…So the lesson is plain: God is guiding foreigners to Christ to worship him.

I like the idea that I don’t have to try to wrap my mind around the miracles of the Bible. Partly, I suppose, because they are miracles and, by definition, are not understandable. But there is a great overriding message in the Bible that you are moving history forward regardless of the mistakes we make along the way.

And I was just reminded in my thoughts that I am so small. I am literally 1/7,000,000,000 of the earth’s human population right now. You, on the other hand, are the only God, and you are amazing. You are simply amazing. And you’ve done amazing things. The coming incarnation of Jesus is the pivotal moment in our human history. Amazing. The grace you give us through Jesus is amazing.

That leads me to a thought my wife gave me yesterday morning. She was talking about controlled burns as part of land management. There were huge grass fires in the Texas panhandle a few years ago, and they were destructive because they were not controlled, but the results were still amazing. Streams appeared that hadn’t been there before. New plants grew. We talked about how that is like what repenting before Jesus is like, but controlled. When the alcoholic or addict of some sort hits bottom, sometimes it can be like an uncontrolled burn that destroys a lot, but if they find help at the bottom. If they find a higher power. If they find you, then you can help them restore what was burned. But for the person who is convicted and invites you in for a controlled burn of their heart. For you to burn away the chaff. To search our hearts and cleanse the clutter. Well, streams of living water will start to flow that we had no idea were even there.

Father, these magi didn’t know what they were doing back then. They just knew they needed to act and so they did. I’m sure their conversation was interesting as they left for Jerusalem. They didn’t know what they would find. I’ll pray later about what their conversation must have been like as they left for home, but for now, I will just sit with them in their ignorant compulsion to seek you out.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen