Christmas comes packed with expectations for many of us. We have been given a picture throughout the years of idyllic family gatherings with smiling faces, elegantly adorned dinner tables filled with delicious food, carols sung around a crackling fireplace, and gifts shared with laughter and joy among family and friends. We may experience many of these joyful memories, but sometimes, things do not script out exactly as we expect.
Instead, this time of year can also be filled with frenzied activities, rushed trips, credit cards bulging with charges from gift purchases, a few extra pounds, and nerves that are frayed and frazzled.
Christmas can leave us empty.
I reflected on the Christmases that my wife and I celebrated many years ago when our children were small. We lived in the western part of Minnesota, where I served a church congregation in a farming community.
We had relocated from the Chicago area to serve in this ministry as a young married couple. The town was located nearly 600 miles away from our parents and family. In this little village, God blessed us with our four children born within five years. We were an active household.
During the Christmas holidays, we loved to be with our extremely large family back in Chicago. This meant that all six of us would pack into our Dodge Caravan and take a 12-hour overnight van ride to Chicago on December 23. The van was filled with luggage and packed with presents.
Within an hour of our leaving, the minivan’s rear windows usually became frosted on the inside of the van. The frigid outside air temperature pitted against the warmth of the van’s interior meant that the heater could not keep up with the condensation.
We would take this long road trip overnight so that the kids could sleep the entire way. It usually worked. Twelve hours to Chicago. Three days with family. Twelve hours back home.
It was a lot of work, but the long trip was worth the effort because we loved what we experienced with our family at Christmas.
As I thought of our long journey to see family, I began to reflect on the journey the Wisemen took to see the infant Jesus Christ. The Wisemen were probably astrologers from Babylon or Persia [modern day Iraq or Iran]. They lived at least 500 miles away from Bethlehem, the hamlet where Jesus Christ was born. Bible scholars suggest that this journey would have taken about four months at great expense to these men.
They were leaving a place of great privilege to make this very arduous journey. What can we learn from the Wisemen?
First, they were on a journey to find something that money cannot buy. They were men of great wealth. We know this because they could embark on a long international trip, gain access to powerful rulers, and bestow expensive presents. They are pictured on Christmas cards dressed in regal, royal garments with a caravan of camels in tow.
Yet, despite their wealth, they were searching for something that their wealth could not satisfy. They were willing to leave their posh palaces and cross a barren desert to fill a craving in their hearts.
What was true of these ancient Wisemen is also true of people today.
Kathe Koja is an American fiction writer. In an interview, she talked about a “deep hole in the human heart that cries out for radiance.”
During the interview, she stated that “our entire consumer culture is predicated on the belief that if you stuff enough things down that hole, you can finally satisfy it into silence. But this has never been the case.”
Jesus Christ echoed this fact by saying: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, and scholar, stated, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
The Wisemen were on a journey to find Him.
Secondly, we learn from them that the way to the top comes by getting low.
These were men of great power and influence. Matthew 2 says that their presence in Jerusalem “deeply troubled Herod”– the powerful Roman potentate. Their questions created great upheaval in Herod’s palace.
The Wisemen must have been used to meeting with kings and dignitaries. Yet the trouble they had created did not squash their desire to have their question answered, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews? We have seen His star in the east, and we have come to worship Him.”
These men of great status were willing to lay it all down because their hearts were hungry for something, for Someone. Nothing could stop them.
The great Israeli statesman Abba Eban wrote in his autobiography about a conversation he once had with Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to climb Mount Everest. Eban asked Hillary, ” ‘What did you feel when you reached the top of the mountain?’
Hillary said, “My first response was ecstatic accomplishment! But then, a sense of desolation filled my heart. What was there left to do now?'”
Isn’t it always like that? We have this great accomplishment, but then the luster wears off. What happens if we claw and scratch to get to the toponly to find that the ladder we are climbing has been leaning against the wrong wall?
Jack Higgins was a renowned novelist who became extremely successful in his craft. When interviewed about his accomplishments, he said: “I wish I had known this as a boy, ‘when you get to the top, there is nothing there.’”
Power, influence, or achievement will never satisfy the longing of the human heart.
And so, the Wisemen were nearing the end of this long journey. At the end of their trek was God, who had shown up on the planet as a baby. He had come for them. And now these men had found the One that their heart was longing for.
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.[Matthew 2:11]
The Wisemen took the whole of their life, wealth, and power and bowed low before the One who had created them.
They had found Him, the One that their hearts were longing for. Timothy Keller writes in his book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness,“If you try to put anything in the middle of the place that was originally made for God, it is going to be too small. It is going to rattle around in there.”
“Do not be afraid. I bring you Good News that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord.”Luke 2:10-11
May your journey lead you to bow low before Him, for only in Him is true joy and satisfaction.
Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,
Opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;
Drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light of day!
Listen to the song here.
