Extraordinary Gifts

<p>After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who understand what it means to live a life shared with God. Gold speaks to us of the nature of God. Frankincense speaks to us of prayer and worship. Myrrh speaks to us of the suffering of grief and loss.</p> <p>For Jesus these were not just fancy Christmas presents to be put away as keepsakes and forgotten about. Rather, these were for Jesus, symbols of the realities of an ever present consciousness of sharing his life with an ever-present God every level of experience. We will take the gifts one by one and apply them to how to live an every-day life in the conscious awareness of sharing life with God.</p> <p>GOLD  Gold speaks to us of the nature of God on display in a human life. Why? In the hierarchy of the attributes of grandeur and majesty and radiance of material things in the earth gold is ranked number one. In the same hierarchy of attributes of a heavenly being worthy of worship and awe and respect there is the idea of a god. The bible says that people who make idols makes them out of gold and silver (Psalm 115) with gold as the first choice. When the people of Israel came out of slavery in Egypt and began their trek though the wilderness they came to Mount Sinai and Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God and was up there for six weeks, a very long time. They became impatient and worried that if Moses had gone then maybe his God was gone too. They wanted a god they could visibly relate to so they made a golden calf, their chief idol deity of Egypt and began to worship it. It was a wooden calf plated with gold. For that they were severely judged and punished by God. Then s