I believe that the Christmas story – Jesus the Son of God was born of a virgin in Bethlehem – is true. I love the story of the God of the Universe becoming small, becoming a baby, including all the events that surround this. And I am fascinated by the Wise Men, or Magi, as some call them.
There are some misconceptions about them. They were not there the night Jesus was born, even though most Nativity scenes include them. They came sometime later when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were living in a house. We don’t know how many there were. Tradition says there were three, but the Bible is silent on that. We know they brought three kinds of gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
What I often don’t remember is that they gave Jesus other gifts as well:
They gave the gift of time. It was a 2,500-mile trip from Babylon to Bethlehem. This is the equivalent of traveling from Minneapolis to the North Pole. Given the speed of travel then, it would have taken 85 to 100 days to make this trip. And then there was the return trip. In essence, they gave 170-200 days of time to simply meet the Savior.
They gave the gift of effort. In addition to the rigors of the trip, they were giving intellectual effort to their search. There’s pretty good evidence that the Bethlehem Star was a conjunction of the star Regulus (the king star) with Jupiter (the king planet) in the constellation of Leo the lion, which was considered the constellation for Israel. While this might not mean much to us, to them it meant that the King of the Jews was born. They were looking for the handiwork of God and giving it their effort. There’s a video on You Tube called “The Star of Bethlehem” which explains exactly how this happened. It would be worth a watch this Christmas season.
They gave the gift of possessions. Gold, which implied royalty, was very valuable. Frankincense, which was an expensive form of incense used only in worship, implied deity. Myrrh was used in the preparation of bodies for burial. The smell of myrrh was called “the smell of death.” Myrrh implied death and pointed to Jesus dying for the sins of the world. All three gifts pointed to the identity of Jesus:
Gold: He is King.
Frankincense: He is God.
Myrrh: He is Savior.
Don’t time, effort, and possessions that mean something determine the value of our gifts? Isn’t something that cost me time and effort as well as carry meaning for the person receiving the gift do lots more than grabbing something that was “on sale’? Ultimately, when it comes to gift giving, it’s not the “what”, it’s the “why”.
And since we’re talking about gifts, what about the greatest gift of all, the gift God gave us at Christmas – the gift of His Son, Jesus, the Savior of the world. The Bible says that Christ came into the world to save sinners – that would be us. King, God, and Savior came as a baby so that we could have the gift of eternal life.
Why not receive that gift this Christmas?
