Daily Devotions - Week of January 8th, 2023

When You Have Found Him

Today we observe the Epiphany of Our Lord. The actual day of Epiphany was this past Friday, but this is a great opportunity to celebrate Christmas all over again! For in Epiphany, we see wisemen, Gentile pagans from afar, come and worship the Son of God in Bethlehem, and we rejoice that Jesus is for all peoples!

This coming of the wisemen to worship the newborn king Jesus is sometimes glossed over and often misunderstood. With the inclusion of three figures bearing gifts in most of our nativity sets, it’s easy to take the magi for granted without fully considering their story—a story that first takes them to the royal city of Jerusalem.

In our reading from Matthew 2, King Herod instructs the magi on what to do next, saying, "when you have found him..." Herod has a worldly view of the new-born King, imagining control over the situation. He has dastardly plans in mind in order to assert power and maintain authority, without any realization that he is but a minor figure in God’s grander narrative.

“When you have found him…” When you take it out of context, it sounds a lot like a self-righteous theology. The world puts so much emphasis on our own abil-ities and powers, placing the onus on us to save ourselves. But it turns out the whole point of Epiphany is that God in Christ finds us, is born for us, comes to us, dies for us, and saves us—regardless of age, race, gender or understanding.



What does it mean for citizens of Christ’s kingdom to seek and follow Him who has found us? Do we follow worldly thinking on what to do with Jesus, or do we follow the Spirit's leading?