A Compilation of Grace

I had the privilege of teaching in my granddaughter’s Sunday school class on December 31. We had a pajama day and celebrated the end of 2023 and the coming of 2024. The theme for the day “happened” to be the three wise men.

I had already been thinking about this subject, as God had highlighted three things to me in my recent reading of the wise men’s story. I wasn’t scheduled to teach, but felt the nudge to share what God had shown me with the class. Since I had begun writing out my thoughts, I got up early that Sunday morning and put together a short lesson from that and offered to share it if there was room. Our Children’s Pastor, Pam, responded quickly with a yes, because she had a space on the schedule just for that and it needed to be filled.

When Pam introduced the lesson was about the three wise men, one of the boys asked, “What do the wise men have to do with the new year?!?” So, I shared that they actually have a lot to do with the new year. In the traditional church, January 6 is Epiphany, a day celebrating the wise men’s visit to Jesus. We usually see the nativity scene with Jesus in the manger with the shepherds and wise men both there. The wise men weren’t there when he was born though, and Jesus could have been as old as two when the wise men came to see him.

The following is an extended version of what I shared in Sunday school that day. I am using the term Magi in place of wise men here.

FOLLOWING THE STAR

And when they saw the star, they were so ecstatic that they shouted and celebrated with unrestrained joy. Matthew 2:10 TPT

Reading just this verse here, you might think it happened when the Magi first saw the star that led them to Jesus. If you did, you would be wrong.

I don’t remember the first time that I heard the story of the Magi, but I do know that I have heard it told and read it in the Bible many times. What I don’t remember is ever hearing or reading that they couldn’t see the star while they were in stopped Jerusalem. Reading it this last time just after Christmas, there it was.

And on their way to Bethlehem, the same star they had seen in the East suddenly reappeared! Amazed, they watched as it went ahead of them and stopped directly over the place where the child was. Matthew 2:9 TPT

Whenever I see something “new” like this, I compare the wording in different versions. Only The Message, of the versions that I looked at, also said that the star appeared again. Others said the star “they had seen” inferring that they hadn’t seen it for a time. It wasn’t directly said, so that could explain why I had never noticed it before.

The Magi were wisdom seekers. They studied teachings from various cultures, and so would have been familiar with the Jewish religion. The footnote about them in The Passion Translation says, “It is probable that these Magos were descendants of those who had been taught by Daniel…”¹ Even if they had scrolls of Scripture, they likely wouldn’t have been as well versed in Scripture as the priests and scribes in Jerusalem. While they knew the country where the king was to be born, they didn’t know the exact place.

They followed the star to Israel, but then their expectation of where they would find a king led them into Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that when they arrived that they didn’t go straight to the palace to find this new king of the Jews. If there was an heir born to the currently reigning king, they would have heard the news somewhere along the way. Still, they started at the most likely place to find a king…the capital city.

This made me think of the difficulty in seeing the stars at night when you are in a modern city. I don’t know if ancient cities glowed much at night or not; but if you live in a town of any size nowadays, all the lights at night partially block our view of the stars. The Magi may not have had literal lights blocking their view of the star, but they did have the “light” of their expectation that kept them from staying on course.

So, I ask, Where am I wandering off course from what God has for me, because of my expectations of what that looks like?

CELEBRATING WITH UNRESTRAINED JOY

The Magi didn’t let their mistaken detour discourage them from continuing though. They didn’t camp out in Jerusalem. Instead, they set out for Bethlehem. That is when the star appeared before them again.

And when they saw the star, they were so ecstatic that they shouted and celebrated with unrestrained joy. Matthew 2:10 TPT

The footnote about this verse in The Passion Translation says, “The Greek is hard to translate since it contains so many redundant words for joy in this one verse. It is literally ‘They rejoiced with a great joy exceedingly.’ They were ecstatic!”²

This idea of rejoicing with “a great joy exceedingly” stood out to me. Thinking about redundant words led me to my friend the Thesaurus. Some synonyms for joy are bliss, delight, elation, ecstasy, exultation, glee, jubilance, rapture, rejoicing. There were many more words than that, but I chose the ones that seemed deeper to me—except for glee. Glee, to me, belonged more with some of lighter words like frolic and revelry, but when I looked at its definition it means “great delight”—so I included it in the list.

This made me think of another verse that is redundant with joy.

The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 NKJV

God sings over and rejoices in us! We are created to sing to and rejoice in him too.

So, I ask, Do I come to my quiet times with Jesus rejoicing with exceeding great joy? Do I wake up each morning with a shout of joy because I am able to live that day in his presence?

BRINGING OUR BEST

My final thought comes from the next verse in Matthew 2.

When they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, his mother, they fell to the ground at his feet and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasure chests full of gifts and presented him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 TPT

This says to me that they worshipped Jesus and gave him their best.

Too often I’ve felt like what I have to give to God is not very valuable. He has been growing me in this, showing me that he created me, and I am his treasure. He also has placed good gifts in me that he intends for me to use. (Read more about this in my first two blog posts.) Whatever gift I bring him still feels so small in comparison to who he is and what he’s done for me.

We sang the Little Drummer Boy during the candlelight portion of my church’s recent Christmas Eve service. When we came to the line “then he smiled at me,” my heart welled up with emotion and my eyes filled with tears. I am not a crier, but for some reason that line stood out to me and touched my heart. It reminded me that the gift that I bring Jesus, no matter how small it seems in my own eyes, is of great worth to him.

So, I ask, Am I living my life daily from a place of worship and offering to Jesus? Do I bring my best for Jesus each day?

_{¹The Passion Translation New Testament with Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Song 2020 Edition, Broadstreet Publishing Group, LLC, Copyright 2020 Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc., Matthew 2:1 footnote “d”}

_{²The Passion Translation New Testament with Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Song 2020 Edition, Broadstreet Publishing Group, LLC, Copyright 2020 Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc., Matthew 2:10 footnote “j”}

_{Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.}