What Are You Looking For? Series

The Eyes of Christmas: Through the Eyes of the Magi

What Are You Looking For?

Dr. Marty Baker / Christmas Eve 2001 / Matthew 2:1-12

www.stevenscreek.net

How much time have you spent this week looking for something important? Many of you have invested hours looking for the right gift to give for that special person in your life. You’ve examined the newspaper ads, mulled over the catalogues and surfed the web hoping to find the right gift at the right price.

Maybe it’s not a gift that you’ve been looking for, could it be that you’ve spent hours looking the all important "remote control" to the television. In our house, the remote control ends up in the weirdest places. Typically, the remote gets lost at least once a day. We find it between the cushions of the sofa, underneath the sofa, on the mantle, behind the television, on the kitchen counter, and sometimes it mysteriously ends up in someone’s bedroom. We’ve gone days having to get up, walk over to the television and change the channel. It’s like being in the dark ages.

Maybe it’s not the remote that you are looking for, but it is your car keys. Yes, I am talking about those pesky little metals gadgets that keep you going and going and going. Sometimes people spend hours looking for their car keys only to discover that you’ve locked them in the car.

Maybe it’s not the car keys, but it’s your glasses. There’s is nothing worse than being on an all-out search for your glasses. You are looking for the very thing that gives you the ability to see. Most of you know that I’ve worn glasses for thirty years. I’ve shared with you that my biggest fear was having to speak in public without my glasses.

Well, I conquered that fear this past September when a local ophthalmologist could not get an accurate read on my vision, so he instructed me to go without glasses for seven days. The first several days were very difficult. I had great difficulty finding what I was looking for. After a few days, my eyesight adjusted and my vision improved. My day vision has continued to improve over the last ninety days, but the night vision has been a little shady.

This past week, I took the next step. I scheduled the lasik surgery. I was quite excited until I went to the preoperative consultation on Wednesday. The doctor scratched his head and said I don’t understand it. When I examine your eyes straight out, you need the surgery, but when they are dilated you don’t. Let’s wait. He couldn’t find the right diagnosis.

I told my wife about it when I got home and she said, "How many doctors is it going to take to say that you’ve been healed for you to accept it? You have been to three doctors already." Well, I haven’t found what I’m looking for. I want clear vision all the time, not just in the daylight hours.

How about you? Are you having trouble finding what you are looking for? Are you groping around looking for a clear path? I meet a lot of people who are searching, but many of them are not quite sure what they are looking for?

Oh, they say that they are looking for a better life, so they embrace success. They convince themselves that if they only had enough, things would be better. Enough of what? If they only had enough achievement, recognition, money, or a larger home, more exciting vacations, a good marriage, beaming kids, a wide circle of friends - then maybe they would be satisfied.

But what happens when you have all of that? Does all of that stuff fill the empty places of your life? No, not at all. I’ve met too many people who have a close-knit life with their family and friends and they possess everything that they had ever dreamed, yet they feel insufficient. They have a deep longing to be at home with themselves ... to be comfortable in their own skin.

This deep longing has intensified over the last few months. The recession, the bombing of the Pentagon, the attack on the World Trade Center and the present war on terrorism has caused many people in our nation to reassess their lives and focus their attention on what really matters.

For too long we have been focused on ourselves, our careers, our pleasures, our dreams and visions ignoring the things that really matter. Then, a tragedy like September 11th, or a sickness, a job-loss, a financial reversal kicks us into reality and we begin to understand that we are not promised tomorrow. The stark reality that life is fragile often speeds up the search for meaning and purpose. They long for something real ... something timeless. They long for truth.