10th Day of Christmas

(Blogspot has changed the way I used to add a picture and I can't figure it out.)
Last evening I meditated on the Visit of the Magi, the Gospel for Epiphany (Matthew 2:1-12.)  This is a captivating story with all kinds of symbolism and references.  Our Christian devotion has also added stuff to Matthew's account.  I found myself as I prayed getting caught up simply in the story itself.
The Magi are a group of exotic strangers, outsiders, aliens.  They believe in signs from the stars.  They are open-minded searchers, willing to go into foreign territory to find the king that the star promised.
King Herod and the chief priests and scribes are arrogant insiders, stuck in the status quo.  They are smug, self-satisfied, close-minded, sure that they have the truth and needn't search any further.  They are not about to go to Bethlehem.
The Magi are the heroes of our story and so we identify with them.  All my thinking life I have been sure that around the next turn there will be a better view.  We want to be searchers, always willing to go on a quest for the living God.  We know that we are never finished growing in our love for God.  We want to avoid thinking that religion is already a finished project, that the church can never change.  We will come to Bethlehem again and again, sure that God is always More.
A final important lesson for me.  They don't confront Herod and his crowd. They leave them in their arrogance and simply "go home by another way."