“The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Ps 19:1).
It’s amazing to me that the Lord speaks through the stars. Not just that they are fascinating and beautiful, but they give directions for desert travelers, provided mathematical calculations for ancient builders, and even told the story of Jesus. Those who studied the stars literally saw the story of Jesus being told in a way they had never seen before. The stars told them that
- There was a king that was born
- That king was King of the Jews
- He was worthy to visit and to bring costly gifts
- He was to be worshipped (who worships foreign kings?)
So the magi probably in large numbers gathered together and trekked to a foreign nation to find and worship this king. Amazing. And yet God used the stars that they studied to introduce them to Jesus. Fascinating. Interesting to note too that the first recorded worshipers of Jesus were foreigners. It’s God’s missionary heart.
We also see that the Lord announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds. These weren’t the religious men of the day but the minimum wage workers who stayed in the fields. I think often they met with their Lord not in the stars like the magi, but in worshiping him openly in the fields while encountering His presence. So when the Lord went to introduce Jesus he met them with the presence of an angel, then a multitude of heavenly host.
Next the Father introduced his son to a righteous and devout man named Simeon. Simeon often went to the temple to worship and so the Holy Spirit nudged him to go to the temple and there he gloriously met Jesus. Met him where Simeon encountered the Lord.
Lastly in the parade of introductions the prophetess Anna gets to hold Jesus in her arms. Here was a woman who was widowed in her early 20’s yet instead of chasing after another husband, she lived in the temple daily worshiping, fasting and praying. Decades of faithful devotion. Everyone knew she would keel over soon as she was “very old.” But God introduced his son to this faithful woman, in the place of her worship which was also the temple.
Everywhere God introduced his Son it was where they were encountering God. For the magi it was in the stars, for the shepherds in the fields, for Simeon and Anna it was in the temple. For those later to come it was through the Scriptures. God meets us where we worship him to show us great and wonderful things. Let’s go worship.