Worth The Wait

“A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel.”  Numbers 24:17

The Wise Men must have been waiting.  It seems that as soon as they saw the star, they started their journey and arrived in Jerusalem with certainty and expectation.  “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star in the east”(Matt 2:2). 

At our house, we’ve been waiting—not for anything earth-shattering or life-changing—just for a movie.  But we’ve been waiting for over eighteen months, and when you’re in middle school, as two of my children are, eighteen months is a really long time (and when you’re way past middle school, it’s still quite lengthy!).  We’ve been marking off the days—literally—and, finally, this morning, the countdown calendar read ZERO!  So as soon as school is out, we’re taking a trip—a journey to a town that has a theater, and we’re going to the midnight premiere of The Hobbit.

We know a lot about the story.  Everyone in the family has read the book—that was a prerequisite for attending the show!  We’ve talked about the plot.  We’ve been following the production updates.  We have a poster plastered on the fridge.  We can name the main characters and most of the minor ones too.  We’ve even talked Grandmom and Grandpa into missing most of a night’s sleep and going with us too.  It’s really fun when something you’ve been waiting for for a long time finally happens.

I wonder if the Magi felt that way—and a whole lot more.  They weren’t waiting for a movie; they were waiting for a monarch.  Way back, a guy named Balaam had prophesied that “a star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel”(Num 24:17).  Obviously, word had made its way to Babylon (most likely through Daniel of lion’s den fame), and the Wise Men were waiting.  And ready to go once the big day arrived.

I’m going to have a great time tonight—riding, chatting, watching, and sharing a special memory and a special movie with those that I love.  It’s been neat how God has used the anticipation of such a small event to remind me of the great expectation of Jesus’s first coming and of how excited I should be for His second. 

Really good movies and a truly righteous Monarch—both are worth the wait!

(Btw, in case you’re a Tolkien fan, I wrote this devotion Thursday, saw the movie Friday night, and raised many cups of coffee that day as a toast to job well done and a story well told!)