(Prenote – This post research was consuming for me throughout December. I’m just now getting it small enough to put out, but we still have a few Christmas decorations waiting to be stored. It was either post it now or wait a year. I’ve never been very good at waiting.)
As Jan and I begin preparing the house for our Christmas celebration, I customarily slowly troll the Biblical account of the Christmas narrative, listening intently. Each year, some facet of the narrative captures my imagination, leading to a deeper pondering of the event’s significance. While the decorations we display are added to each year, the old familiar ones are just that “familiar.” They remind me of past joys but do not elicit fresh joys. The same is true of the Christmas narrative.
The” facet” that captured my attention this year was the wise men from the East. East of Judah is a lot of real estate, cutting hills to India and Japan from over the closest horizon. Just digging into the significance of the term “East” in the Bible is a fruitful studious adventure. The word first appears in Genesis 2:8, where God planted His garden.
That information helps me limit my search for the wise men’s home base. Reflecting on Old Testament history gives a hefty clue to Jerusalem’s fall and its leaders’ relocation to Babylon in the country currently named Iraq. When I think of that event, I remember the prophet Daniel, who undoubtedly began a synagogue where Yahweh’s law was studied and applied. The wise men were probably academic and religious practitioners’ descendants of the prophet hero Daniel.
Here is a thought worth pondering: Remember, there were four hundred years from the last prophet to Jesus’s birth when God appeared silent. While the “Promised Land” citizens participated in the crumbling of the Jewish state, in heathen Babylon, a contingency was hanging on. Yahweh may have been silent in Jerusalem but was undoubtedly active in Babylon.
Thinking about Daniel in Babylon spurred me to think about Nahum and Nineveh. I have not been to either, but I have been as close as ten miles north of the ruins of Nineveh while on a mission trip to Kurdistan. Where the Plain of Ninevah abruptly rises into mountains north of Nineveh is the town of Alqosh. On the city’s northern edge is the ancient “Nahum’s Synagogue.” I am reminded of Nahum’s Synagogue whenever I see a small rock from the collapsing east wall on the table beside my bed. When Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” this building was over a hundred years old.
In the center of the synagogue is a large box covered in a green cloth; it is the crypt of Nahum. Around the vault is an ornate metal fence well over six feet tall. Tucked in the lattice of the enclosure are bits of paper and cloth put there by individuals who sought God’s blessing or intervention.
When the six of us entered the synagogue, a young husband and wife stood in front of a small alcove in the wall. They were lighting a candle. Through an interpreter, we learned they had been walking five miles every day to come to this religious place to cry out to God to give them a child. They had been doing this for months. We gathered around them, and the two young ladies of our team prayed for the couple and their desire for a child.
But this blog is not about that. Maybe a blog in the future.
If you exit the synagogue’s front door, you face a mountain. Halfway up that mountain are two structures. The higher one is the white outline of a cross. The lower is the green outline of a Christmas tree. They are not very distinct during daylight, but at night, they are visible to the citizens of Mosul, i.e., Ninevah. And that was the point.
The two “trees” were not decorations but declarations. You see, at the time we were there, ISIS was still flexing its troubling but diminished rewriting of history. Mosul was about to be liberated from the aggressor destroyers.
There are many theories of what the “Holy Night” star was. But they are not nearly as interesting as what the “Christmas star” is today. What is there in my life today that draws me nearer to Jesus? Is it plain for others to see me as a star, leading them to a deeper life with Christ?
A fun little children’s song we sang to our kids is “This Little Light of Mine, I’m gonna let it shine” comes to mind. It is not a Christmas song, but it could be.
In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16, CSB)
Photo – Taken looking north from the Mahum Synagogue in Alqosh, Afghanistan.
Baldwin Heirlooms 