Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 6 · January 6
Treasures Opened
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”
In the summer of 1882, England played Australia in a famous cricket match at the Oval in London, the match that gave birth to the contest called the Ashes. One of the England players in that match was a twenty-one-year-old named Charles Studd, and a full ground came to watch. About three years later he sailed for China with six other young men from Cambridge. Around that time he came into a large inheritance, and he gave it away in a series of gifts to missions and to work among orphans. The stories differ on the exact amounts, but nobody disputes that he gave it away.
He was doing something Matthew records without a word of comment. By the time the wise men arrive, the family is indoors, for the wise men "were come into the house," and Jesus is now "the young child," older than a newborn. Later Herod kills the boys "from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men," which tells you roughly how long the journey took. The visitors are foreigners, "wise men from the east" who studied the stars, and the first act of worship in Matthew's Gospel belongs to them. They fall down before the child, and then they open their treasures. Matthew names the gifts, "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh," yet he never says what they stand for. He only tells us they were given.
A full ground watched the cricket, but nobody watched Studd sign those gifts away, and today the score of that match matters far less than what he gave. The men kneeling in Bethlehem had almost no audience at all: a mother, a child, one another, and God. The crowd at the Oval came for a show and got one. Your giving this week belongs in the Bethlehem room, where the only One who needs to see it is your Father in heaven. Jesus promised that "thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 6 is The Banquet (Song of Solomon 2:4).