I have just come in from an encouraging Circuit Service at the Methodist Church in the centre of Bexhill, pictured here. We had a pre Epiphany service with reflections and some amazing organ playing. The church is vast!
Part of my wacky ways here as Superintendent is to insist on a Circuit Service once a quarter, so tht we worship together. This year we need to think about vision together as well. Our reflecting on Matthew chapter 2 tonight helped us think about the courage and conviction of the travelling magi.
They felt an inner, irresistible need to leave everything to follow the star that would lead them to a new understanding of God’s presence. They kept going. We are so good at giving up! The Gospel is about good news, about discovering the possibility of God, about potential, about journeys, about catching up with where God is, often far ahead of his Church! I wonder if other people joined the magi and their entourage on their journey, caught up in the wonder of it all?
I like
Spurgeon on this need to keep to the vision, and to keep following:
“Beloved
friends, if wise men of old came to Jesus and worshipped, should not we come
also? These wise men came naturally, traversing the desert; let us come
spiritually, leaving our sins. These were guided by the sight of a star; let us
be guided by faith in the divine Spirit, by the teaching of his word and all
those blessed lights which the Lord uses to conduct men to himself. Only let us
come to Jesus. It was well to come unto the babe Jesus, led by the feeble beams
of a star; you shall find it still more blessed to come to him now that he is
exalted in the highest heavens, and by his own light reveals his own perfect
glory.
Delay not,
for this day he cries, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest."
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