A Star and a Gift

This is the season of Epiphany.

It is a time marked by our remembrance that wise ones of old left home to follow a star and to honor a king.

I’ll not retell the story; you likely know it well.

It is enough, I think, to remember that these learned astrologers caught a vision that changed their lives. It inspired them to set out on a journey that took them far from home, far from their “comfort zone.” It was a journey that may well have cost them as much as four or more years out of their lives.

All because they believed that God was doing something special in history and they needed to respond, to “pay homage.”

They brought gifts – precious gifts – and gave them as a witness that God’s sign had been seen and responded to.

People are still seeing signs of God’s activity in our time, signs of God’s saving grace at work in our world. And wise ones are still responding with gifts – gifts that are precious to them – as a witness in our day and time.

Gifts like time and treasure and even their very lives, all because they have been captured by a vision that will not leave them in their comfortable places. A vision that summons them to leave home and even safety to go and tell others what they have seen.

To be captured by a vision of Jesus, and Jesus’ great commission to all who call themselves disciples, is to be invited – even compelled – to leave the places where we have become comfortable in order to give our witness to what God is doing now and in the New Year.

Our routines are, for many of us, comfortable. They are “the way we have always done things!” The day-to-day business of our ministry – wherever that is – can lull us into thinking that we are following Jesus. But then something happens that causes us to look again or, as was said to young Simba in Disney’s great movie The Lion King, “look closer” at what we are doing so that we become uncomfortable with the status-quo.

If I am not willing to give witness to what Jesus is calling me to do, if I am not willing to step out in faith and make “disciple making” an even larger priority in my ministry, if I am not willing to give my energy to that which truly does transform this world, I should not be surprised if others are reluctant. 

--excerpt from a column by Bill Dobbs, Clergy Asst.

God Is Still In Control!

Miss Lladale Carey
Web Content Producer
www.umcgiving.org
lcarey@umcom.org