The Way

Among the prophets, Elijah was distinctive. Faithful, but sometimes easy to scare. Harsh, and very forward, but also could take a nudge to get going. He was the spitting image of a human being, flawed, but radiant in potential.
This week we’ll be starting a new series looking at Elijah, his faith, and what we can learn from it.

As a person, Jesus was someone with many distinct traits. Merciful, blunt, often harsh, but boundlessly wise and very candid, forgiving to an extreme while seeing everyone to the core, with no lack of understanding; he was a teacher and guide willing to die for everyone he was correcting. It’s a topic of much debate, but also something we can strive for, not a series of contradictions, but of greater purpose together with an awareness of the time and its standards while never bound by them. He was a piece of heaven brought down to us with all that that entails.
This week it’s the characteristics of Jesus, and how we can be more like him.

The wise men were following a star, just as most of us follow one of our own. It’s not always a good one. We follow desires, urges, callings, sometimes on detours and sometimes on pains, others for people, and even many on God’s call. Everyone has problems and everyone has strengths, just as everyone has desires and almost everyone has goals, but there’s no answer to everything except for the one God gave us. No matter which star we follow, all roads, eventually, lead to Jesus, be that in this life or after.

Snow is a set of tiny, glimmering little crystals, each with its own self-contained pattern. They come together first into a small sheet of frost and finally a blanket of ice like a plume of frozen wool, and this catches the light, blinding up close, but shining from afar like a heavenly lamp that lights up everything. Without the individual pieces in that puzzle, there's only cold air and barren ground.

Mary and Joseph had no idea what was coming, but God did. Even as the first pieces of something much, much bigger, God knew them personally.