Even when we are impressed (or intimidated!) by the faith of someone--We must not worship/idolize/epitomize/or be-enamored-by them.  It is natural for this to happen...because we are mortal and human. It is natural for us to fall-under-this-"spell"...because we are sinful.  Our flesh and our mind naturally tend to want to worship what is near...and what is now .  We get impressed---and we fall to our knees, sometimes physically, and sometimes emotionally or even intellectually---to bow before whatever or whoever is enamoring us (for any number of reasons). We might worship things other than God with our time: We scroll, and we fall prey to worshiping people and trends online.   We might (even accidentally or subconsciously) worship people: We imagine that someone has it all together , (by worldly terms or by our faith-definitions).  And so--for any number of reasons, and in any variety of ways--we worship them.  But our Lord (alone!) demands ...

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem  ( 2)  and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. ”... Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.   ( 8)  He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”  (9)  After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.  ( 10)  When they saw the star, they were overjoyed .  ( 11)  On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.  ~Matthew 2:1-2, 7-11 ~~~ What are we wondering about today? Where are we wandering today?...

I'm not sure if you've heard of this trend, but some parents give their one-year-old babies their own  birthday cake.  It's called a 'smash cake', (for obvious reasons), and that's what happens to it.  The tiny child inevitably digs into the cake with their hands, or face, or both , and it's never pretty.  It's messy and...did I mention that it's messy? Birthday cakes just weren't meant for one-year-olds to eat them all by themselves--and with no assistance.   Do kids like cake?  Sure , but we (at any age) should not be ingesting a whole cake by ourselves, with our hands, it's just not the way birthday cake was intended to be enjoyed. When reading the Bible today, I thought of the one-year-birthday smash cakes.   Not because of birthdays and birthday-cake-references in the Bible.  No--I don't think that Adam and Eve baked a smash cake (each) for Cain, Abel, and Seth (and their other children) on their first birthdays, and nor can I remem...