On Sunday January 4th we celebrate Epiphany. Yearly I wonder what it was like for the three kings to 1)follow a star to find Jesus and 2)to make this extraordinary trip based on gut feeling! As someone who has followed gut feelings all of my life I am encouraged and feel exonerated from being challenged for not using logic to make major decisions.

Having just celebrated the first of January and my birthday, I am starting out with great energy toward my hopes and goals for this New Year. Today I am encouraged by the modeling that the Three Kings/Wise Men give us in the gospel reading. They followed the outer light of a star a very long distance. I don’t know the dialogues which were part of the trip, but being human I am sure that there must have been moments of question. “Why are we doing this?” “Are you sure we should have turned right back at that pyramid?” And of course that age old question, “How much farther?”

I then think about the inner questions that they might have had. “I don’t know why this is important to me…did I make a mistake in saying yes?” “I have had these gut feelings before, but usually I have more details to go on…what if this is just a waste of time and expense?” “Why must we go to a land where they don’t even worship the same way we do…what kind of child king is this one?”

In the gospel for the Sunday of January 4th it is said of the three kings:

And behold, the star they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage.

Ready my heart, mind and spirit Oh God, so that when the star shows up my heart will be ready to follow Your light.