A New Route Home

    Many years before, it had begun with God speaking and extending an invitation for  a journey to a new land where He would begin a new nation.  In response, Abraham set out from a place where many gods were worshiped to follow a very different kind of God.  Over the course of that journey Abraham was to discover just how different that God was. 

    Many years later, God again extended an invitation to the same land, and the Magi responded, following the star on a journey that would lead them to a new born king who had arisen to establish a new Kingdom. 

    In both cases, things were never quite the same again.  As a result of his journey and the God he grew to know along the way, Abraham's life was changed in powerful ways, and he became part of something much bigger than he could have imagined.  So too with the Magi, in ways far beyond what they could have imagined at the time, they  too went away changed. 

    Responding to God's leading and finding our way to where the kind of God that God really is revealed changes everything, even if the full extent of the impact is not fully realized at the time.  Once we have been there, we don't go home the same.  The journey that gets us there are only the first steps on a way of living and being that follows.

To listen to Pastor Ken's sermon "A New Route Home" once again, click here.

Questions for Further Reflection

Matthew 2:12 (NIV)

And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Song for the Road

    Anxiety was a real part of the world in which Jesus came, and it remains a very present and real part of ours as well.  But the story that Jesus invites us to participate in is a one that provides a counterpoint to those that revolve around that which makes us anxious by replacing it with that which makes us grateful.  Take a few moment to think about how this is expressed in David Wilcox' song, "Show the Way."

(NOTE:  With YouTube you take what you can get . . . you might want to skip through the first two minutes of guitar tuning.  Not the best recording of the song, but you'll get the idea) 

If you would rather read the lyrics, click here.