January 2, 2026

FIVE days to Bethlehem…

…journeying as magi.

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.” (1 Corinthians 16.13-14)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Paul’s warning to those who said they were believers in Jesus as the Christ professing Him alone as their Lord and Savior was “Beware!” While Paul was personally (as a believer himself) and professionally (an evangelist of the gospel of the Christ who saved him from himself) familiar with the challenges in the world which stood against him, he was more aware of the inner challenges which were even greater. Paul was a man of passion. He was a defender of the faith of his childhood. Judaism was all he knew. Judaism was all he wanted to know. He knew his Judaism against the backdrop of other religions and professed faiths of those in the world in which he lived. Knowing what he knew, Judaism was the only way, truth and life that made sense to him. It gave him meaning and purpose. The fervency of his faith was driven by his love for God. So convinced was he of this faith and his passion for it that he pledged to defend it with his life. Then came Jesus….

“Beware!” He was on guard against this new enemy of Judaism and Jewishness. Jesus was a threat to all he knew. Paul’s faith and faithfulness was a robe, a cloak, a tunic and an armor he put on to protect what was actually the most vulnerable. Paul’s weakness and vulnerability was what was inside. His Achilles heel was his heart and his mind, his attitudes. He had to be strong outwardly because he had no other defense against what he only knew was a challenge to everything he ever thought and thought he knew. He was a defender of his weakness. He fell prey to the very same weakness as did his fellow Pharisees, priests and philosophers. The truth had become his enemy. How would he protect him against all others? He would silence the messenger in hope that the message would fall silent. He became the very attitude of fear and failure. Then came Jesus….

While Paul fostered the attitude of strength with a facade of power and threat, he did not realize he was battling against both the inevitable and the invincible. The inevitable was that no matter what, He would have to face his enemy. Jesus would help him to do that. That inevitability would provide Paul with an attitude adjustment. The invincible was the very same Jesus. The problem is that Paul may have only known of Jesus or experienced him as a child in those last days of Jesus’ life. Paul did not see Jesus as a threat because Jesus was dead. Paul was now fighting those whom he would might have said, “Believed in ghosts.” The stories of Jesus’ resurrection appeared more tale than truth. Yet the “truth” only got stronger. It never would die. So, again, kill the storyteller and the lie would remain the only truth people would know. Paul was betrayed by the lie he told himself. The lie was that faith was something you put on and not something that you truly were. Then came Jesus….

On the Damascus Road, Paul was confronted by the greatest truth anyone will ever know. In that encounter with the Resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, his whole attitude would change. He could no longer “be” an attitude. Paul was challenged by the weakness of his truth that could not stand before the only way, truth and life that ultimately and finally exists. What was that? It was the attitudes of “being.” It was not just some being. It was not just being. It was the Supreme Being. It was the Word of God made flesh. It was not a ghost story. It was a gospel story. It wasn’t just an attitude that someone could cop. It was the attitude by which we all can cope with the lies people want to put on us. It was a “be” attitude. It was the encounter for Paul of the first day of the rest of his life.

When the magi began their journey to Judea and Jerusalem, it was with an attitude of wise men seeking the truth that would overcome the lie. In their desire to worship the One who was born King of the Jews, they were seeking the very essence which made all they knew make sense. What they desired was the satisfaction of knowing what they were supposed to know that everything else said there was something more. As magi, they wanted platitudes. What they would find were attitudes. In Jesus as a two year old boy, they found the very fulfillment of wonder. They saw what everything said only God could do. It wasn’t a story. It wasn’t a platitude. It wasn’t an astrological event to be traced by the heavens. What they saw was life as only God could create. If God could do that then what else could God do? Their attitude toward God changed. They would, like Paul, no longer “be” an attitude no matter how holy or righteous it would seem. They would, like Paul, become that “attitudes of being, a Supreme Being.”

The “eight maids a-milking” reminded those who loved Jesus and wanted to be like Him of those very “be-attitudes” which formed and defined life into “attitudes of being.” You can read them in Matthew 5.3-10. They create the image in which we have all been created. They are not simply outward articles of faith clothing to be put on and taken off at will. They are heart changing, mind transforming and life saving truths that make us strong inwardly so that no enemy can ever defeat us. That is what makes us wise as those who journeyed to Bethlehem to see what the truth was all about.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.