Matthew 2:7-12: in context

The wise men have followed a star across a great distance to find a newborn king, and Matthew describes their arrival with care. They come into the house, see the child with Mary his mother, and fall down and worship him, opening their treasures to offer gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These are foreigners, outsiders, Gentile stargazers with no covenant claim on Israel's Messiah, and they have traveled far, sought diligently, rejoiced with exceedingly great joy, worshiped on their faces, and given their costly treasures. Meanwhile Herod, the reigning king, wants the child dead, and the religious experts who could quote the prophecy do not bother to make the short trip to Bethlehem at all. The outsiders seek and worship; the insiders are indifferent or murderous.

But it is the last line about the magi that lingers. Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another way. On one level it is simply a travel detail, avoiding Herod's trap. But it reads like something more. Having found Christ and worshiped him, they do not go home by the road they came. Their encounter with the child sends them back a different way. And that is what a genuine meeting with Christ does; you do not return from it by the same route you arrived. The old road is closed, and you go home changed, on a way you would not have taken before.

That is worth holding up against my own encounters with Christ. The magi's seeking cost them something, a long journey, real treasure, humble worship, and it left them unable to go back the way they came. My own faith can be far cheaper and far more static, a Christ I approach without much cost and leave without much change, returning every time to the same old road and the same old life. When I have truly met Christ, do I go home by another way, actually changed in direction, or do I keep coming back to him and returning, unchanged, along the same road I always walk?