Star of Wonder

Today is Three King's Day, also known as the Feast of Epiphany. (If you are unfamiliar with the story, it's at the end of this post.)

What catches my attention most about this story is the second verse: "Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and have come to worship him." 


When we look at the night sky, everything we see is the past, often the distant past. Polaris, the North Star, is about 323 light-years away (source). That means it takes 323 years for the light from Polaris to reach Earth. So, if Polaris died today, we wouldn't know until the year 2338. The Sun, our closest star, is about 8 light-minutes away (source). If the Sun had died when you first loaded this page, you wouldn't know until after you finished reading this post and moved on to another site. Space is huge, and the distance light from a star travels before it hits our retinas is immense, which means the time elapsed between when that light first 'left' the star and when we see it is also immense.

The Wise Men "studied the stars." They were astronomers. Like Hermione filling in her star chart for her O.W.L. they probably knew all the major stars and constellations that dot the night sky (and think how many more stars there were for them to see without the light polution we have now!). In the midst of this full night sky, one night they saw a new star come up in the east. But, given what we know about the enormity of space, can we really call this star new? The new star must have been 'born' at the very least hundreds of years before Jesus, perhaps thousands of years before, perhaps even more. What I am getting at is that the star was placed in the sky ages before the Angel Gabriel uttered the words "Hail Mary" to a young Palestian woman. 

If we believe in a God who is all powerful, who is all knowing, who is all loving, then we believe in a God who is on top of things, who is taking care of us and making plans for us. "For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11). What the story of the Three Kings tells me is that God was planning to send the Messiah long before He informed anyone on Earth. Not only was God planning for the Messiah, He was putting those plans into action. "Plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope" - I think every Christian could agree that Christmas gives us hope.

It also means that if you think the run-up to Christmas in the States is too long, then you would have been super frustrated at the centuries of run-up that God had for the first Christmas. 

Image Source

 Matthew 2:1-12

Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the time when Herod was king. Soon afterward, some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.”3 When King Herod heard about this, he was very upset, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. 4 He called together all the chief priests and the teachers of the Law and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?”5 “In the town of Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered. “For this is what the prophet wrote:6 ‘Bethlehem in the land of Judah,    you are by no means the least of the leading cities of Judah;for from you will come a leader    who will guide my people Israel.’”7 So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.”9-10 And so they left, and on their way they saw the same star they had seen in the East. When they saw it, how happy they were, what joy was theirs! It went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 11 They went into the house, and when they saw the child with his mother Mary, they knelt down and worshiped him. They brought out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and presented them to him.12 Then they returned to their country by another road, since God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod.