\u201cWhere is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.\u201d
\n \u2014 Matthew 2:2<\/p>\n
Sometimes the big news story of the day is not the one we think it is\u2014or there is more to it than we realize.As Jesus was born, something else was also happening far away. Matthew tells us about \u201cMagi from the east\u201d\u2014often called \u201cwise men\u201d\u2014who studied the stars. The Magi were astrologers, religious leaders who believed that the movement of the stars and special signs in the heavens could give direction for people\u2019s lives.To the Jews, that kind of study was superstitious idolatry. And yet we see in this story how God was writing an even bigger story than people were aware of at the time. Jesus was, of course, Israel\u2019s promised Savior. But today we can also see that Christ\u2019s birth was a crucial part of God\u2019s plan to draw all nations to himself. Even people who were lost in the confusion of sin and idolatry could see glimpses of God\u2019s invitation to draw near and ask, seek, and find him. In the story of the Magi we see how God can meet us where we are\u2014no matter who we are\u2014and make the good news of Jesus\u2019 birth come alive for us.This Christmas, we might think (or act as if) our celebrations and gifts are the main thing of the season. But God wants so much more. He wants to draw people to Jesus, especially those who don\u2019t know him.How is God surprising you with that invitation this Christmas?<\/p>\n
Lord God, help us to understand what is most important in our lives. Draw us near to you, we pray, for Jesus\u2019 sake. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhere is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.\u201d \u2014 Matthew 2:2 Sometimes the big news story of the day is not the one we think it is\u2014or there is more to it than we realize.As Jesus was born,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[940],"class_list":["post-12592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}