The Three Magi travelled far from the East to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Child in the Manger and offered him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Their journey was so full of stories, and it was a long journey that can even be described as a suspenseful journey because of the character of King Herod, who wanted the Infant Child dead. During those times in our history, there were no GPS gadgets and there were no technologies available to guide them to the exact place where the Infant was located except for a star which guided them until it stopped to where the child lays with Mary and Joseph.
They were overjoyed to see the Infant Child and they immediately knelt in front of him and gave him their gifts. Frankincense is symbolic of Christ, the High Priest. Myrrh is a perfume that they used to anoint dead bodies, symbolic of the death of Jesus for the sake of the truth about him as the Son of God, therefore, Jesus the Prophet. Gold is symbolic of Christ, the King. Even before they set out on their journey, they knew that what they were about to see was the promised Messiah. They found their joy and their salvation with the guidance of a star, which appeared, went out of sight, and re-appeared until it stopped.
My dear friends, we know what a star is. Sometimes we even make wishes upon seeing a falling star. We have stars in our midst and lots of them (movie icons, whom we idolize). In the complexity of our understanding of what a star means to us, I presume that we can all agree that a star makes us joyful, bright, and we always want to follow our own stars.
The Three Wise Men followed the star, and it led them to God. Maybe they also followed other stars in their life before the Real Star unfolded before their eyes. But when they saw the real one, they followed it notwithstanding the risks and the dangers of their journey. Maybe it is fitting for us to ask ourselves: “What or who are the stars in our life right now?” Are we following the real star? Or maybe we are being fooled by other stars that can only bring us far away from the real one?
This world can give us so many different stars and make us follow them even to the point of no return. Money is one of the stars that many people are chasing day and night. Power is another star that we can even kill our own just to have that star under our control. Our desire for various faces of pleasure is another star that can corrupt our innocence and be filled, instead, of our insatiable and animalistic way of satisfying our natural and physical self.
Humans as we all are, we may have made a lot of decisions already and a lot more choices between good and evil in our lives. We may have made wrong turns in our journey that can no longer be reversed. We may have made disastrous decisions that have affected other people in a negative way and have lost their own direction in life. We may feel so regretful that we have decided to follow the fake star instead of the real one. But let us realize that we have not stopped yet. We are still on our own journey, and we must stop, reflect, and start to follow the real star that will lead us to God and to our own salvation and joy! We are not yet wasted for as long as we are alive. If we have not decided to look up to God’s grace so we can gaze at the real star, then, now is the time for us to look out for that real star and follow it with our whole mind, heart, and body. Surely, it will lead us to God, to Jesus in the Manger, our Savior!