Wise Men Still Seek Him

Our Christmas Presence readings continued with Pamela Kennedy's The Other Wise Man, which is a retelling of Henry Van Dyke's The Story of the Other Wise Man. (I didn't realize I was getting a retold version, but it turned out fine, especially since it made for a nice picture book. Still, I can't wait to read the original.) This is a story of a man set to travel with the other magi to find the Christ child, to present his own gifts of jewels, who ends up never actually setting eyes on Him because every time he gets close, he sees someone in desperate need and he cannot turn away. In the course of his journey he sells the jewels meant for the King in order to help the people he sees in need. At the end of his life he is disappointed that he never actually achieved finding the King, but is told that through his acts of love and service, he actually did.

The day after reading The Other Wise Man I read Carol Lynn Pearson's The Lesson to my children. The main lesson in The Lesson is that life's most important lesson is to teach us how to love. There are other things to learn, as well, and this is a good short read.

I then read some excerpts from Thomas S. Monson's "The Search for Jesus", we had a discussion of all these readings, and then we watched the video below. After that, each child made a small poster on the theme, "Wise Men Still Seek Him" for themselves, using old Christmas cards or graphics from the computer.