Baxter gets adventurous sometimes and wants to go exploring. Since his world is confined to the house where we live, he has a rather limited reach for his curiosity. He has the run of most of the first floor, so there’s little to peak his search for the new and unknown there. However, the basement is another matter. Sometimes he sits in front of the basement door and cries to have it opened. Once granted access, he can be gone for a long time. This nearly windowless underworld of furnaces, washers and dryers, storage closets and some old furniture is fascinating to him. He likes to sniff around, visit any space where the door is cracked open, and find a comfortable spot on a chair or couch for a token cat-nap. When he has had enough of this strange world, Baxter returns to the main floor satisfied and content with his familiar surroundings, but happy for the opportunity to visit a strange land for a while.
Did the Magi feel the same when they returned from their visit to Jesus? They had to leave their familiar surroundings to follow the star. They confronted a new ruler with suspicious motives in Herod. They finally arrived at the place where Jesus was staying and fulfilled their journey’s purpose, to offer simple gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, marking their respect for the newborn king. Their curiosity set them off on an adventure, and their faithfulness to its objective brought them back satisfied. Mission accomplished.
Such is the journey faith marks out for us. We set out looking for something still unknown to us, and our curiosity and inquisitiveness won’t let us rest. We want to explore more about what makes life matter, about how we and all of creation came to be. We wonder what will become of us when we mess up in life or when we are a mess of withering, dying life. Our search leads us into new areas with new questions, new ideas and new practices to follow. We sometimes follow strange ways in our explorations, but we somehow find the course again and continue the journey.
Eventually, we meet the Christ, sometimes as a child, sometimes as a person in physical or spiritual need, sometimes as an elderly person—He takes many human forms. Always, the Christ comes as an encounter with grace that shows us there is a loving mystery deep within and among the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This mystery fascinates us, encourages us, and leads us to new encounters where we come to understand that goodness, truth and beauty are one in God. God shares these with us as signs of His life, and they keep us going until we eventually come home to God. But when we return, the journey we have taken has made all the difference. We are changed, converted by grace, part of a new creation, remade as children of the loving Father of all.
So as Christian believers, we are Magi on a search, looking for more from life and hoping to find it in the encounters we have throughout our life’s journey. Our underworld is no basement like Baxter’s. It is the divine underpinnings we discover to any true love and concern. Finally, we come home again, grateful for the journey, with the companions we met along the way, and the Christ we found at the end.
