- Sherri Scheetz
WISE MEN KNEW
Updated: Dec 5, 2020
December 4
Music has a way of triggering memory. We hear a few notes of a song and immediately remember what grade we were in the year it was popular, a certain summer, or maybe a special person. When radio stations start playing Christmas music each year, We Three Kings, takes me back to kindergarten. I don’t know all of the words any more, but I remember memorizing the very complicated and confusing verses for the first of many school Christmas programs. I had no idea where “Orientar” was, or why anyone would want myrhh . When I was older, I realized I’d misunderstood: “We three kings of Orient are”; and I learned that myrhh was used to make perfume. Even without understanding, I loved the song. The melody is majestic, to fit the image of three wise men following a spectacularly bright star that was like GPS only better.
This star was a sign from God. It was leading to a baby. Not just any baby, but Jesus, born a king somehow, even though his dad was a carpenter and his wife worked at home. Even more amazingly, this baby brought a gift for all of us that was, and is, better than any present we could possibly give to others or buy for ourselves. (Way better than something to make perfume.)
This baby would grow up, share a message of love and hope, give his life for us, and still reign forever! Radical and life altering stuff, but it can easily get buried in the way his birthday, Christmas, is celebrated. I missed it for a long time. Just like the song I didn’t fully understand, I loved Christmas, but didn’t really dig in to learn what it meant.
The wise men knew to seek this baby. After years of celebrating the birth of this baby, Jesus the Christ, I saw that I needed to know get to know him myself. Is this the Christmas to find out more about this baby, this King, and to learn about the gift that he brought for you?
Matthew 2:9 ... the wise men went their way. And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.