Thoughts on an T. S. Eliot Poem

There is an old poem by T. S. Eliot named, “The Journey Of The Magi” and I have been mulling it over these last few days. The poem is written from the perspective of one of the magi that went and saw the Christ child and then returned home. Years later he is reminiscing on what he saw and how it changed him. Here is the last part of the poem:

The Journey Of The Magi

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

The old magi feels a sense of isolation and loneliness in this world. He went to see a birth and it changed him forever. When he returned back home nothing was the same. His old religion, his astrology, and his people are foreign to him in this new way of thinking. His worldview has changed. He saw a birth for sure, but also a death of his old self. Now he awaits death again.

Perhaps you have felt that way before, perhaps a life event changed you so much that you feel as if those around you cannot relate. When I was 17 I went off to Army basic training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. When I came back I was a changed person, I was not as naïve and had been forced into manhood. However, I still had another year of high school to finish. So much of what I saw around me seemed so meaningless at that point. I had been trained to go to war and the teenage normality around me seemed so out of place in my new worldview.

In the same way when we truly submit to Christ it changes our whole world. No longer do we look at things the same way. Our minds have been renewed (Rom. 12:2). Like the magi, we give up our false idols and can’t understand those that don’t do the same. Like the magi, we know that this world is not our home. Our citizenship is in heaven and this world is only a temporary residence.

I so look forward to the day when there is no more war, no hate, no cancer, no sin. I look forward to when the old dispensation is gone. What about you?