For some of us it is the soaring ice-clad mountains of the west. For others it is a wave crashing on a wintry beach or breaking gently along the shore on a sun-soaked summer afternoon. Some of us find that music, the language of the heart, speaks to our souls in a way that awakens deep longings for joy and meaning. Still others sense that in the best of our relationships, in the gathering of family or the chance meeting of old friends, lies a clue about who we are meant to be. We may hike or ski, mountain bike or walk or walk along the beach, listen to music or contemplate the master painters because it is in so doing that we experience just a taste of something we wish we could drink in more fully.

So, if you had to answer that famous small group question “Where would you go, what would you do and who would you invite if you could go anywhere and do anything with anyone?” what would you say? If you had an important decision to make by next week, where would go, what would you do, who would you talk to? If your rich uncle opened his checkbook and said, “The sky’s the limit. Make this the Christmas you’ll never forget,” where would go, what would you do, who would you invite? And if someone said, “You need to find God. Go anywhere, do anything, bring anyone,” where would you go, what would you do, who would you bring.? I don’t have a rich uncle with an open checkbook, but I do need to find God, to get closer to him from time to time.

I don’t mean this to be a trick question. Some would argue that we never find God; God finds us. He found Mary going about her daily chores in Nazareth and called her to believe the impossible. He found Joseph in the middle of a crisis and called him to share the shame that Mary was sure to bear. He found the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night and called them to Bethlehem to see and then to spread the news of all that he had done. Point well taken. How and where has God found you?

Others would argue that even when we try to find God he defies our search. Elijah expected to find God in the earthquake, wind or fire. Instead God hid in the still small voice of calm. Point well taken. In what least expected ways has God appeared to you?

But it’s not a trick question. Why do we build our church camps in the mountains and on the shore of the lake? Just as Jesus found lonely places and quiet gardens to pray and just as he took his closest and best friends up the Mount of Transfiguration, so there may be things we do and places we go and people we know who can help us find God.

For me it might be hiking around the alpen lakes of the Sierra Nevada high country. And I have in mind who might make the trek with me. This friend from California and that one from Oregon. Another from Michigan, and, yes, I’d invite a couple of my Beaver friends, as well. No guarantees, but doing that, being there, and those people are all parts of the stories I can tell of having found God – of having felt close to God – over the years.

At best, my place high in the Sierra, my walks along its alpen lake and my conversations by a bubbling brook or around a glowing campfire will only point me to God. At worst they become false gods. They are not God and must never be worshipped. How tempting it can be to worship a mountain temple or a restorative activity or the fellowship of a band of brothers.

Our NIV translation simply maintains an anglicized version of the Greek word for the visitors from the east. They are traditionally known as the wise men, and that they were, sung about as kings and that they were not. Some modern translations call them astrologers but it does them an injustice. They are magi, learned men of Persia from a priestly caste. They practice the art of looking for God or the gods. The word is also the root of our word magic, and we might not approve of all the sorcery they used in seeking the divine. Among the arts they use is finding signs of God in the created order, specifically in changes in the stars and the planets.

Sometime in the next day or two you are going to read a story in the paper or on the internet about what astrophysicists think the Magi saw. In fact, there is evidence for a number of phenomena that might explain the appearing of a light in the sky. A conjunction of planets in 6 B.C. or a comet or nova observed in 5 B.C. might fit the bill. A God-sent star explains it well enough for me. Whatever it was, it was a clear sign for the Magi. It pointed to divine activity, the birth of a king to the house of Israel, they thought. God used this natural wonder to call them to a journey west.

The carol tells us that field and fountain, moor and mountain, they followed the yonder star. Moors between Iran and Israel are hard to come by, but the star led them eventually to Jerusalem, where they expected to find the king. In fact, they went to the king’s palace in search of a recently born son, but found none. What they found was a dying tyrant, old and paranoid, who would, in the end, order the slaughter of innocent children in a desperate attempt to cling to the power that was slipping from his blood-stained hands.

The decrepit dictator knows nothing of the birth of a new king and so he orders his own wise men, the teachers of the Jewish law to help decode the secret. It’s no secret to them. The prophets knew. Micah spoke of a town in the land of Judah out of which a ruler would come, a shepherd for God’s people. The teachers of the law, those students of the Word, gave Herod and the Magi the answer they sought. If a king had been born to the Jews, he would have been born in the little town of Bethlehem, a place of no account, save for the glory of its past. But promises had been made to the little town. It was David’s city.

The Magi hurry off to Bethlehem, barely half a day’s walk from the gates of Jerusalem. Herod’s asks them to return with news of what they find. “I’d like to worship him myself,” the old deceiver says, feigning devotion to hide his murderous intent.

The star, the sign in the natural world, the pointer from the created order, brought the Magi this close to Jesus, to Emmanuel, God with us. This close. The last six miles of a thousand mile trip. Sometimes this close, almost-but-not-quite, can be a fatal mistake. It gets us to the old dictator, not to the new-born king. Without the Word to bring them into the very presence of grace incarnate, the Magi find themselves in the presence of evil incarnate, the wicked Herod whose malignancy threatens the infant king before he is old enough to speak a single word of God’s love.

You can get close to God in the mountains or on the beach, through a circle of friends or sometimes through a favorite pastime. Maybe even this close. But none of those things will get you to God. In fact, they may put us in mortal danger. Being this close, we think we have arrived, but are in Herod’s Jerusalem, not Jesus’ Bethlehem. It is only through the Word that we find Bethlehem’s babe and Calvary’s savior.

As K., M. and E. grow older, it will be very good to have a youth program that gets kids to the mountains and the beach. Missy, make a note of that. But the mountains and the beach – amazing signs that they can be – will not get them to God. That’s why you have promised to help Miguel and Leigh open the Word to these three and all the other children of the church.

Where would you go if you were seeking the presence of God? I’d be hiking in the high country and talking with my friends. But I’d have to have my Bible with me or be in danger of getting lost, very lost, dangerously lost. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.