The GPS That Led to a Dirt Road

In 2018, a couple from Chicago named Marcus and Elena drove through rural Kentucky searching for a renowned woodworker whose hand-carved furniture had gained a quiet following online. Their GPS kept rerouting them down increasingly narrow roads — past strip malls, through small towns, and finally onto an unmarked gravel path that dead-ended at a modest workshop behind a single-wide trailer. Marcus nearly turned around twice. Everything about the journey suggested they were lost. But inside that workshop, they found masterpieces — chairs and tables of such extraordinary craftsmanship that collectors across the country now wait years for a single piece.

The Magi understood this kind of journey. These were not naive wanderers. They were scholars, astronomers, men of influence who had studied the heavens for decades. Yet the star led them not to Rome's marble halls or Alexandria's great library, but to an obscure village called Bethlehem — a place so small the prophet Micah had to defend its significance. They could have stopped at Herod's palace, where power looked the way they expected it to look. Instead, they pressed on to a place that made no political or logical sense.

And there, in the ordinariness of it all, they fell to their knees.

The Almighty has never been impressed by grand addresses. He chose a feeding trough for His Son's first bed. Those who truly seek Him must be willing to follow the star past every reasonable exit ramp — because the most precious things in this world are almost never found where we first expect them.