Our wise men / kings / Magi travel after Christmas to symbolize that their journey happened after Jesus was born and Mary and Joseph were in some sort of housing. Sometimes there are presents on "Little Christmas" -- the grandchildren always hope so.
This one apparently has to deal with a horse…and, ahem, dust. I could write that it represents desert sands, but basically it tells the story of a woman who would rather read the books on her bookshelves than dust said shelves.
Yes, we have three. Not because we know there were three (we do not, but we know there were at least two), but because the set came with three. :D And, all of them are currently traveling past many words. Wise men throughout the centuries have traveled through many words. Only one was THE WORD.
A man wrote of the Word and his name was John. Today is the the Feast Day of John. I don't want to lead you into thinking I necessarily celebrate feast days of the saints, but I have family and friends who do. Since I have my own feast days (two as a matter of fact: Birthday and Mother's Day), I think it rather cool (no one says "cool" anymore, do they?) to celebrate John's day.
John preached a Christmas sermon; although, it's not titled that in my Bible.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4).
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'" And of His fullness we have all received and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:14-17).
Boom! (As my granddaughter would say…I think it means "Super cool" or "There! Beat that!")
Jesus: there from the beginning, God, all things made through Him, life, light, the Word became flesh. He came as a baby, grew up, dwelt among us and John and the rest beheld His glory, full of grace and truth. Grace and truth, beautiful words; beautiful Word.
John wanted us to know how they saw Him, how they heard Him.
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life -- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us -- that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full" (1 John 1: 1-4).
They saw Jesus, fully human, fully God, and John writes so that our joy may be full. Our joy doesn't end on Christmas Day. Our joy is daily; our joy is full.
In the beginning of this blogging adventure, I intended to connect with Frank Laubach's letters -- sometimes that has worked out, sometimes not. But, today, I will end with comments from the twelfth of October and the twenty-second of September:
"How I wish, wish, wish that a dozen or more persons who are trying the experiment of holding God endlessly in mind would all write their experiences so that each would know what the other was finding as a result! The results, I think, would astound the world."
"We have got to saturate ourselves with the rainbows and the sunset marvels in order to radiate them. It is as much our duty to live in the beauty of the presence of God on some mount of transfiguration until we become [bright] with Christ as it is for us to go down where they grope, and grovel, and groan and lift them to new life. After all the deepest truth is that the Christlike life is glorious, undefeatably glorious."
