STAR SURPRISES

You just never know when God will jolt your complacency. The first week of January church members traveled to Midwest Mission Distribution Center in Chatham, Illinois, for a week of packing layettes, health kits and school bags and building school desks for third world countries. Every evening after dinner out, one member gives a prepared devotion. On my evening, I deliberated on my devotion as we traveled back to the dorm after dinner along Old Rt. 66 and the cold corn fields of Illinois. Disembarking the church van I glanced skyward: The black velvet sky showed piercing pinpricks of rhinestone stars. And right above was Orion’s Belt turned vertically. I excitedly nudged my friends as they too descended the van. My entire devotion I prepared a week ago was built around Orion’s Belt! Now God presented the real image to ponder and reflect upon as I offered my humble words…

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshipped him. Matt. 2:9-11

The image of the Christmas star is always a constant for me: a softening glow above the manger or glimmering in the black sky with silhouettes of camels and kings caught in its brilliance. Every year it rises above tacky commercialism heralding God’s gift to a dark world all over again. I depend on that consistent image when my world turns dark. It’s like Jesus himself, always there for me, even when I have trouble finding him or discerning his desires for me.

But sometimes the star surprises us. I remember reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson for the first time to my own kids and then to classrooms full of kids in the 1970s. The reaction of the Herdmans, “absolutely the worst kids in the world,” to Christmas is priceless, beautiful and totally shocking. We talked about it this season again when friends took their grandchildren to see a presentation: the grandchildren’s total absorption and amazement as they discovered the story of Jesus’ birth all over again.

Remember the last lines of the book…

“When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord---Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us, everywhere”
“Hey! Unto you a child is born!” (80)

Even beyond the Christmas season stars are still a constant I look for. After thirty years of Florida in springtime, I still dash to the balcony the first night to hear the Gulf’s crashing surf and view Orion’s Belt right in front of me welcoming me back: three stars parallel to the beach, illuminating consistency. Just like Jesus. But wait…over Christmas we stayed in a motel in Tombstone, Arizona. We were out viewing the night sky and my husband noticed with stargazer accuracy, Orion’s Belt, turned perpendicular to the Arizona desert. Surprise!!! Until this year I had never viewed Orion’s Belt anything but horizontally, tilted a little maybe in the summer sky over Lake Michigan, but never totally vertical!!!

God gives us surprise images to jolt us out of our comfort zone, our smug relationship with him so that we may discern a new direction, a new thought, a new action. But it is still our responsibility to recognize God’s jolt to our complacency. When I googled Orion’s belt I discovered the same three stars are known in Latin America as “The Three Marys" and there are many folk names for the Belt of Orion including Peter’s Staff, the Magi, and the Three Kings. What is God telling me now? Further Star Surprises await our discernment.