A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that has stuck with me, asking for some attention and consideration. 

Toward the end of the dream, I decide to go home. The road home is on the other side of a small hill. I’m on my bike and when I get to the top of the hill I see that the road ahead of me has been completely destroyed. Military planes are flying low, bombing, and shooting along the road. I cannot go home on that road. While I’m standing there looking at the road a group of cyclists and a few cars speed past me, go down the hill, and turn right into a dark forest. The dream ends.  

It’s not a surprising dream. It highlights and holds before me what I already know. I am at a point in my life when I cannot continue traveling the same road. I’ve retired and moved to a new house in a new town. My life has changed. I have changed. The context, opportunities, and challenges of my life have changed. And I must find a new road, a different way of getting home. 

I suspect that happens to all of us at some point in our lives, probably more than once. Life changes. Circumstances change. Things happen. Plans don’t work out. And the usual and familiar road can no longer take us where we want or need to go. Desires, needs, interests, resources, or opportunities have changed. The old ways no longer work. We have to travel a different road.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about. Maybe that’s where you are today. Maybe you’re having to find a different road. How do we find that other road and what guides us in those times? 

As I reflect on my dream I recall the journey of the wise men in the Epiphany story (Matthew 2:1-12). “They left for their own country by another road” (Matthew 2:12). The road that brought them to Jerusalem could not take them home. They had to find a different road, a new way home. 

And the thing that strikes me about that is that it wasn’t a star that put them on that other road. It was what I am calling an anti-star.

Here’s what I mean by that. What guides the wise men to a new road, a different road, is the very opposite of the star that led them to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem. Herod is the anti-star. 

“Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, [the wise men] left for their own country by another road” (Matthew 2:12).

Herod is the opposite of everything that was reflected in the light of the star that originally led the wise men to the place where Jesus was. He was a tyrannical and authoritarian king who “rose to power largely through his father’s good relations with Julius Caesar.” He was known for colossal building projects. He was despotic, brutal, and violent, even executing some of his own family. He “used secret police to monitor and report the feelings of the general populace toward him. He sought to prohibit protests, and had opponents removed by force.” (Wikipedia) He was afraid (Matthew 2:3). He slaughtered the innocent (Matthew 2:16) and executed John the Baptist (Matthew 14:10).

Herod is a dark star, a fallen star, the anti-star about which the wise men were “warned in a dream.” Because of him they found another road to their own country. 

There are stars and there are anti-stars and both guide us. One calls us more deeply into who and how we want to be. One gives and values life. The other repels us from what takes and diminishes life. We look at the other and say, “That’s not who or how I want to be,” and we find another road home. 

So let me ask you this: Who or what are the stars and the anti-stars in your life these days? Who or what are they in the life of this country? In what ways might they be guiding, asking, or pushing us to take a different road, whether personally or nationally? 

Neither my dream nor the Epiphany story tells me which road to take. They simply highlight that it’s time for me to choose a different road. Maybe that’s true for you. For America. 

What do you think? What would it mean for you, me, America to take a different road?

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Image Credit: Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash.