The Tribune

Dr Colin Archer, that erudite scholar of the Methodist Community has often voiced that universal truth that mankind by nature, is primarily spiritual trying to live out that built in spirituality in human form.

Spirituality is universal, and pervasive and a perennial interests of mankind expressed in a variety of ways.

Archeologists, digging in ruins of the earliest civilizations, have found relics and images which confirm man worshipped regularly.

Spirituality predicates recorded history.

Noted Theologian Paul Tillich once said: “If there was no God, we would need to invent one to worship.” Something deep inside us longs to reconnect with its spiritual progenitor.

Physically we all have been given five senses but these are far from complete unless we embrace “a sixth sense” of spirituality – an awareness that a source, a transcendent power outside of ourselves, to whom we, as created beings are answerable and accomplishable.

It was St Augustine the distinguished Roman cleric who helped shape much of the doctrines of our faith. He opined: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord and our hearts are restless until it finds itself in thee.”

Find your star.

Find and follow your star it will bring you to all that is most lofty and personally worthwhile in your life.

The sacred texts which gives us the story of the birth of Christ might lose some of its efficacy if we do not go a little further through the rubbles of traditions, raw commercialism and carnal secularism and find our star

The wise men were not “Christians” on a pilgrimage they were most likely pagans – non-Jews with a native predisposition to explore new phenomenon.

They saw and followed a star.

The astrological firmament connected with that inner voice that caused them to leave comfortable and familiar surroundings and traverse hundreds of miles to the boarders of new excitements.

Find your star – embrace your star – follow your star and eventually you will come to the boundaries of fulfillment.

A sense of worship.

It is the discovering of your “North star” that will ease much of the pain you will suffer in pursuing it.

The wise men in the story of Christ birth, came from afar – some say modern day Iraq but the point I make is that if you wish to discover your life’s purpose you must first connect to that “inner witness” – that speaks loudly,” “this is what you are here to do”.

Finally, the wise men eventually came where the child was.

Christ’s birth gives us a new way of life; a new way to understand and move from sacrificing to worshipping, the wise men travelled. Is that not in fact the road we all sometimes must take?

This year has not been a good year for most of us. Personal failures; disappointments, health issues and then came Dorian. All these notwithstanding here we are – we still can give thanks and worship.

Sometimes, you have to fight the same battle more than once to eventually win it.

After they discovered the Christ child, they went back home another way.

A river eventually cuts through a rock not because of its power but because of persistence.

The wise men from the east found their star and by persistently following it, it guided them to a worship experience with the King of all Kings.

I commiserate with those who are aimlessly lost in the wilderness of disconnection. We also stand with those hundreds of persons waylaid by the social inequities of our times.

Find your star, follow your life’s purpose and eventually it will bring you into a sovereign kingly presence you were born to serve.

From my house to yours – Immanuel – God with us.