Star-Followers from Far Away

Far, far away from Bethlehem, in a land where nobody knew the old promises, there lived wise men who watched the sky.

Night after night they watched. They knew the stars the way you know the faces at your own table.

And then one night, there was a new one.

A star that had never been there before, bright and steady, as if it had been waiting for them to notice.

The wise men looked up and thought: a King has been born. A great one. We must go and find him.

So they went. They packed up their camels and their gifts, and they left behind everything they knew.

These men were outsiders. They were not from God's people. They had never heard the prophets read aloud. No one had ever told them how God promised, again and again, to send a Rescuer. Long before, when God first called Abraham, he had said that through Abraham's family every family on earth would be blessed. But that promise had never reached their far country.

You might think a King like that was only for the people who already belonged. The ones who knew the songs. The ones who had been watching for him, like old Simeon and Anna in the temple, waiting their whole lives.

But the star did not shine only for them.

It shone all the way out to the edges. To the far-off lands. To the strangers who didn't know the promises at all. As if God leaned down toward the people furthest away and whispered, You too. Come. There is room for you.

The wise men followed and followed. And the star stopped over a small house in Bethlehem. They went inside, and there he was. Just a little child, with his mother.

And do you know what these great, faraway, foreign men did?

They knelt down.

They got down low in the dust before a baby, and they worshiped him. They opened their treasures and gave him gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, gifts fit for the King of everything.

Far-off strangers, kneeling before the King of the Jews. People who never belonged, suddenly belonging. They were the first to come from far away, and a whole world of far-off travelers would follow after them.

Because this baby was never going to be a King for only one kind of person. He was going to gather a family from every land, every color, every faraway place, every child who ever wondered if there was room for them too.

If you have ever felt like the one on the outside, the one who came late, the one who didn't know the words: the star was for you.

That gathering began the very night the wise men knelt, a whole world starting to come home to the King who was waiting for it, and it has not stopped since. One day every last far-off child will be there, gathered in close, and not one of them missing.

The wise men were only the first to find their way home.

You are not too far for him to come and get.