Yes, it’s a cheesy post title (but if it’s what you need to hear today, then you claim it with no shame 🙂). It’s also a line that gets thrown around a bit which can make it somewhat meaningless. 

This week as we ‘follow the star’ I feel the need to clarify the theme a little.

I started the week exploring how the Magi literally did follow the star in order to find the baby Jesus. However, we can interpret the phrase in a metaphorical way and that could make it a little unclear.

Which is why I feel some clarification is in order.

To do so, I’m going to return to a prophecy from Numbers that I quoted last week:

A star will come out of Jacob; a sceptre will rise out of Israel.

If you’ve read last weeks’ posts you’ll know that this star is Jesus. In fact, in the last book of The Bible, known as Revelation, Jesus gives himself the same label.

 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

And not just any star, but the bright morning one. With this imagery we can easily pull out some probable messages about Jesus:

Jesus shines brightly, destroying the darkness.

Jesus heralds the start of a new day, time and season.

If we looked at other passages in The Bible, we could support those claims. But why not go a bit deeper on this one, because I feel that the bright morning star is a symbol of hope.

There is so much darkness in our world and there was darkness for the Jews and all of humanity before Jesus was born into the world.

Think back to my first post for Advent. In that I explored how there was enmity between Eve and Satan and that a rescuer was needed.

Jesus was a warrior who came to rescue his people. There was nothing cute about it. But because he did come to rescue his people, we now have hope.

The darkness has lifted. The light of the bright morning star has come.

Is it any wonder that when Jesus first began to preach, he chose this passage from the Old Testament:

“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

When I first started writing this post, I wondered if the image of Jesus as a star was a bit of a tangent. It’s not a metaphor I readily think of when thinking of metaphors associated with Jesus.

In the last 500 words of so, I’ve decided I was wrong.

Jesus really is a star of hope. The only hope we have to be rescued from sin and death.

So let your hope in Christ continue. All is not lost.

Yours holding onto hope,

Alison