The magi follow a star. In cities with colleges and astronomers, community calendars often invite the public to lectures on the star of Bethlehem. Perhaps scientists will one day chart with certainty a spectacular heavenly event that captivated these diviners and led them to Jesus.
Even without such proof their search for God in the visible, natural world enchants me. This is the world we experience. This is the world we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. This is the world that engages our affections and nightly turns our hearts toward morning and waking anew. We live in its rhythms and by its lights.
Creation, not the written book of Genesis, is the first source of revelation. Creation manifests God’s life-giving and sustaining presence. Today we follow the stars with the Hubble telescope, which has confirmed Einstein’s theory that we live in an expanding universe.
We are seekers still like the magi. Physics has taken us within the atom. Biology has decoded the human gnome and learned how molecules splice and proteins fold. In our world God acts not only in the beginning but in all 13.8 billion years of our unfolding. The God of our cosmic story is not fixed and static but dynamic and life-giving.
God comes to us from the future as we experience the lure within us to become all we can be, a drive we share with all beings. In our relationships with each other and our partnerships with Earth, evolution continues. In Jesus God shows us all we can become.
- When has the mystery in which we live astounded you?