A Devotion for January 12, 2016

Tuesday: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him (Matthew 2:1-3; NIV).

            First off, please accept my apology for missing yesterday. I was leading the Bible study at our circuit pastors’ gathering and forgot to post in the afternoon.

            Last weekend, we thought about the so-called wisdom of each of the characters in the story of the Magi. Herod had a wisdom of a sort. He had a wisdom of valuing and keeping power. It’s no wonder that “all Jerusalem was troubled” when the Magi turned up asking for a king. Herod was a brutal man, evidenced in history by his execution of his wife and her two sons and in the Bible by his slaughter of the boys of Jerusalem (Matthew 2:16-18). And they rightly worried about what Herod would do when he perceived a threat to his power.

            None of us is as brutal as Herod was, but we, too, find ourselves in the grip of the wisdom of power. We, too, know how to preserve ourselves and our power, even if it’s in more subtle ways. We know how to withhold forgiveness from those closest to us as a tool to force them into our debt. We know how to ignore viewpoints to preserve the rightness of our own cause. Yes, there’s something of Herod about us, too.

            So, it’s important to recognize that the King under whom we live calls us to a different life and is Himself very different. Our Lord Jesus did not cling to power, but gave away all of His rights, all of His prerogatives, even His life on the cross. His was not the wisdom of power but the wisdom of generosity.