After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
                                                                                         Matthew 2:9

Someone once said that the road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.  Our walk with Christ is really not much different. Oh, I know, our salvation is based on Christ alone, and on nothing that we do.  Likewise, God’s acceptance and love of us is similarly a done deal, nothing that we can ever do to earn or affect it. 

And yet Paul exhorts us to ‘run in such a way to get the prize’ (1 Cor 9:24) and James explains that we are to ‘resist the devil and he will flee’ (James 4:7).  Jesus himself declared that he ‘did not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matt 10:34). 

The reality of our faith is that we are daily presented with a plethora of tempting parking places. They may mask themselves in busyness, fatigue, disappointment or distractions, but they are, every one of them, orchestrated attempts of our enemy to keep us from following that star in the east. 

The wise men would have just been a bunch of smart guys if all they did was recognize the star. What made them wise was their recognition of its great importance, an understanding that changed their lives, that convinced them that it was worth the effort to follow from the east, to keep following when Herod interrogated them, and to not stop until it stopped … over the place where the child was. 

Ah, and that was the goal, wasn’t it: finding the Christ, being where He was.  The key to being a wise man is not diplomas, but determination; and that determination is only possible as we begin to allow God’s Spirit to reveal the wonder of the Christ, of Christmas, to us.

May you know the Christ this Christmas.  May you, like the wise men, pursue His presence at all costs.  May you resist the parking places dotting your holidays, those distractions from the depths of hell itself, and not stop until you are at the place that the King has for you.

Fight well this Christmas my friends.

To the King,

David