JPS 12.23.07

Matt 2:8 And he (Herod) sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also."

9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

At Cape Canaveral this past Thursday they launched a rocket with an expensive payload. On-board was the most recent version of a GPS satellite, which the NASA spokesman proclaimed to be the latest and greatest version of this global tracking system. Indeed, the letters G-P-S stand for ‘Global Positioning System,’ and this satellite will continue and enrich our ability to locate where we are - and where anything else is, on the face of the earth to an accuracy of about 3 feet.

GPS is a great thing! When I was recently in The Ukraine, we set out on a trip across the country by car. They have few accurate road maps to begin with, and then we faced the additional challenge of several detours which were the result of railroad construction. They would place a single detour sign which would divert you, but there were no subsequent detour signs to re-direct you back to your original route once you on the detour route. This brought great anxiety, as there were many opportunities to head the wrong direction, and heading the wrong direction is not a good thing when you are in the middle of nowhere in The Ukraine. Only one thing saved us – and that was the fact our driver, George Markey, had GPS on his I-Phone. We weren’t even certain of the GPS, but it proved to be correct each time, and we made it to our final destination.

Oh how we hate to be lost, especially when we don’t really know where we are and not certain of where we’re going. Jesus has been our guide, and He is meant to be understood to be our guide in an even more important way. Being lost on this planet is bad enough - being lost for eternity is worse than never being born.

Jesus is The Way, and He always has been. He desires we be certain of that. To the wise men, accounted as kings from the earth, this principle was demonstrated very early in Jesus’ young life on earth. The wise men sought Jesus, (whom they probably knew of as a result of the prophecies of Daniel,) and they found Him by supernatural guidance. The same is true for all men who seek Jesus with earnestness. He will always provide the Light to be found by Him. And there will never be any doubt about being lost once you are found.

- Pastor Bill