Which star are you following?
“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” So begins the second chapter of Matthew. This Sunday Christians across the world will be remembering the journey the magi made to see Jesus. If you care to look it up, T.S. Elliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’ is worth reading. There is a trend in charities to set up epic fundraising journeys: trek the desert, the Amazon, the Great Wall of China. We are so used to the journey of the magi that we don’t think how epic this enterprise was. They set out on a theory that a birth of such significance had been revealed in the stars, and warranted them risking everything to see this child. They followed a star, but perhaps not closely enough, because they end up going to Herod. However, they were put on the right track by the Hebrew scriptures. When they arrived at the house, they realised they were in the presence of someone special. Consideration of this journey will be on the website after Sunday. We are embarking on the epic journey of life into 2019. We may have certain plans in place and events booked, but none of us knows what the New Year holds. The question is, which star are we going to follow? Will we be sucked into the competing stars of 21st Century society, or submit all to the one who is the goal of our journey, Jesus Christ? It is to him that we surrender our hopes and fears. His is the star we follow.