Tags
darkest before the dawn, Ephesians, Epiphany, Isaiah, lectionary, Matthew, religion, spirituality, theology, traditional christmas story
It’s been almost 20 days since I’ve done this, no I didn’t do this while in my self imposed exile from the internet. Well, it wasn’t technically self imposed. I did move and the communications weren’t able to be set up until a few days ago. It was only then I realized that even though I don’t watch that much tv, I still get distracted by it.
I can still hear Handle’s grand music to the first part of the passage in Isaiah. Just like we state, it’s always darkest before the dawn, and it looks like the writer in Isaiah was trying to show that through his words and imagery. Continuing in the music vein, there was a duet back in the early 80s that called themselves “Wendy and Mary” They took several of these verses and put them to music.
In the end we will come from all nations and worship Him. It’s also interesting to see the prophesy about how the wise men who came from the east. No telling how many actually came, but it was enough to put Jerusalem in an uproar. What is also interesting is to see two of the gifts that were presented to Jesus at that point in the wordings in Isaiah.
In Ephesians we see how these sons and daughters who come from afar (I think it means the gentiles) also have much responsibility. Stewardship if you will. We all need to realize that we don’t own anything. We came into the world with nothing and we will leave with nothing. He who dies with the most “toys” wins” goes the saying. He who dies with the most toys will not win in the end. Most people who are in their last stages of consciousness never state that they wanted more “stuff”. They almost always state that they wished they could have spent more time with family. If only we realize this early on would our lives be more fruitful and peaceful.
And now we get to the second part of the traditional Christmas story and the arrival of the Magi. Magi were astrologers and they studied the stars. I still think it’s interesting that they came, or at least in Matthew’s gospel it’s stated that they came. The Magi were originally the Medes from the Persian and Median empire. Still, how else would they know about all this? I suspect they knew from the Mosaic text when Balaam was called and the donkey spoke to him as if he were a man. That scripture mentions that a star will rise out of the east and such. This is probably where we have the idea of a star rising in the east. We have no idea what happened, if there was a star, or a conjunction of planets or what. What we do know is that God made sure that the Magi would come and give homage to the Christ.