Spiritual Vision Injections

January 4, 2021

 Scripture

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied,  (Matthew 2:1-5 NIVUK)

Spiritual Vision Injections

Yesterday was Epiphany Sunday and people around the world remembered the story of wealthy foreign diplomats who arrived in Jerusalem with their astrological charts indicating a royal birth. Their arrival threw the Israeli King Herod for a loop and he turned to his spiritual advisors for help.

They connected the visitors’ story with their own story of the promised Messiah who offered deliverance, freedom and forgiveness. The foreigners went off to worship and Herod retreated to his fears and plotted – not to connect with the divine plan of which he was steward, but to preserve his status at any cost. His religious commitments were shallow at best, perverse at worst.

By contrast, the foreigners had vision which led them on a spiritual quest to serve and advance the plans of the God who was not their natural focus. They were generous and giving and joyful.

It feels like we all need an injection of vision for the start of this year to connect with God’s power which energizes joyful service rather than angry self-protection. Herod’s fear led him to destroy innocent children; our fears and self-focus may make us destructive in our own but seemingly insignificant ways.

The days are murky but with God’s help we can have vision for light, love and service that builds and cares for the common good.

A Prayer for Today

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21 NIVUK)