A Baby is Born

Yesterday's sermon trickled, sunk and settled somewhere deep in my soul.

The Gospel passage was about the journey of the three wisemen to meet baby Jesus.

Not me sitting in the pews wondering how adorbsies (adorable) Jesus was!!!

I know you've thought about it too!! Anyway... It's my baby fever season.

Back to the inspiring part. There's something the priest said that refocused my thoughts from picturing Jesus as an adorbale child.

The three wisemen's story is our story.

I have been on a journey towards understanding who God is while equally hoping to attain a bonus of figuring out the purpose He has for me.

You know, try to see the vision of who I am supposed to be.

I'm in that season and I can tell you, it's bitter sweet!

The three wisemen were on a journey and they were set on finding where the new King was.

Despite briefly losing their way, they got to where they had to be eventually and gifted Jesus the most precious possessions they had.

Now, what was interesting is that this special star must have been seen by many people yet the three wisemen were the one's who followed this star.

It may have been predetermined to be so but I understood that special star as a sign.

A sign to find where Jesus could be even in the darkest nights.

There are many bad things that happen in the absence of light yet the star of Bethlehem shone in divinity.

For some reason, I still believe we can find this star in the midst of all the chaos that constantly engulfs the world.

It would be easy to advice one to commit oneself to seek something deeper but one also has to want it for themselves. In contemporary time, the journey of the wisemen towards the star resembles an inner journey of discovery.

This hit home moreso on my journey towards understanding who God is and what He means to me.

As a Christian, I have always grappled with the disunity among the masses.

The contradicting reality that some adults are not worthy to be looked up to.

That human nature is a funny thing when you do not understand the concept of free will and freedom coupled with the idea of live and let live.

Being in a state of being constantly consumed with confusion and questions for too long makes you look inward more to figure how to make the world a better place.

Maybe the world never got to live up to everything I was taught as a child or maybe I have a soft heart and expect too much from the world.

The idea is a little murky.

For a long time I was at odds with Christian values I was taught and what the world and people around me reflected back.

It was the first time I interacted with the word 'hypocrite' and fully understood what it meant.

For a child growing up with conflicting scenarios, one can quickly lose faith in people and the world.

Listening to the story of the three wisemen keenly for once in my life helped me understand that maybe, we are all on a journey and some of us could be inching towards embodying Christian values.

This story helped me understand that God has placed a compass within all of us to find a roadmap to follow to Him.

Now, this bitter sweet journey is beautiful because you get checkpoints!

My biggest checkpoint thus far is appreciating humility, patience and love.

The thing they have in common is that they take time to grasp but once you do, life seems more warm and fuzzy.

They also speak deeper parts of you but of course this is in my view.

I found a kind of intimacy in this checkpoint—

Somewhat similar to what the wisemen may have felt when they met baby Jesus.

This came to be with the choices one makes which the priest alluded to as a roadmap.

The roadmap develops with every choice we make everyday.

It develops and we find our way with the help of our internal compass which is within us.

When our choices align with the compass, we get to follow the correct signs and be humble enough to remind ourselves to let God's will be done.

My favourite part of this Gospel passage was the gifting part.

The wisemen renounced the things they held dear and made themselves vulnerable before God.

We could have material or natural gifts that we possess but there is something about giving it back to God and glorifying God with those gifts.

My most important take away was to never get lost in the gifts we could receive from prayer and forget about God.

It's not a transactional relationship.

I'm somewhat guilty of this.

Praying hard and getting swept in the what I really wanted and forgetting to thank God and put Him first.

We see this later on in the story of the ten lepers.

It's funny how the Bible is such a perfect mirror to society.

Timeless.

Unchanging.

Holding truth for many generations even before it was inscribed in scripture.

I marvel at this.

The moral of this story is to ask yourself where you are on your journey.

It does not have to be religious like mine but on the path that you have taken.

Are you still on track?

What are you willing to change?

To renounce?

To chase and find genuine consolation in?

Tafakari hayo.

Nothing but cocoa love,

Sam 🌼