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WHAT TO EXPECT THIS SUNDAY
On January 1 st, we began seeing clearer images from NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule (“beyond the Borders of the Unknown World”), an asteroid in the distant region of our solar system. After 13 years and more than 4 billion miles later, humanity is being provided our first glimpse of a distant fragment that could be unchanged from the solar system’s earliest days. Amazing!
In a picture taken years earlier by the Hubble Space Telescope (see picture), astronomers had to sift through a haystack of stars and asteroids about what to explore after the flyby of Pluto and pointed the trajectory of New Horizons to this frozen peanut shaped asteroid 22 miles tall and 9 miles wide.
Two thousand years ago, other astronomers from points almost beyond the borders of the unknown world of that time, looked into the sky and followed a star. We called them Magi. We ascribed them to be “Kings” who came to visit Jesus. We say there were three of them, but who knows…Matthew doesn’t say. Some traditions claim their names were Melchior and Gaspar and Balthazar. Matthew doesn’t tell us their names, so it’s as good a guess as any. What Matthew does tell us is that they came to the capital Jerusalem looking for the infant Jesus, and visited an angry and frightened King Herod in Jerusalem. The infant Jesus was in modest Bethlehem, not far from the royal city of Jerusalem. The Magi were off by nine miles (the thickness of Ultima Thule). It's got me thinking about how astronomers can fly New Horizons billions of miles away and capture images of something 9 miles wide and how easy it is for us to for us to look in the wrong places and on the wrong things.
This Sunday, it is Epiphany and it is a good time to look upward into the night sky and to look inward and reorient our vision to look in the right place. I hope your travels will bring you to church this Sunday at 10 am, and discover again the significance of Jesus being born for you.
Also, Elders will be ordained and installed during the worship service. I know you will want to be present to show your support of their willingness to offer their time and service. Nate will be back leading the music. He will be playing a variety of Epiphany hymns and improvisations. We hope you can make it this Sunday for worship!
This Sunday’s Scripture: Isaiah 60:1-9; Matthew 2:1-12. |
