Today is Epiphany

Today is Epiphany.  Epiphany is the Christian festival marking the visit of the Magi to celebrate Jesus Christ's birth. The story points out that God’s Messiah was revealed or appeared to the Arab wise men, not only to the Hebrews, but to the whole world. The idea of a transformative sudden insight has led to the use the word to mean a “sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence”  It is the day we remember the wise men who came seeking Jesus and went home changed, on a different path.

We, as a church, are seeking a different way—looking for an Epiphany—a intuitive leap of understanding and a new appearance of Christ to lead us in a new direction. Just as Christ was born up to 2 years before the Magi made it to Bethlehem (or Nazareth, as the case may, we are not sure.) so our new direction may have already happened and we are waiting for our vision to clear. We may already be on the new and different way and just don’t realize it. We need to have confidence and trust in God and follow the star we see in the future.

No matter which ways we have traveled here, as individuals or as a church, we are called to go forward by a different path. As the New Year begins, it is also a good time, not so much for resolutions that we don’t follow anyway, but a good time to take a new step & invite Jesus into our hearts brand new. Life has a way of deadening our spirits in the rough and tumble struggles of life. Our passion is dissipated, our joy is consumed and our minds are distracted. We need to intentionally take time for a personal renewal and discovering new direction, personally, as well as a church.

In the midst of life’s many pressures, demands and efforts, it is worth bowing down to our Lord and King offering the gift of our devotion, our holiness and our sacrifice. It is time for our own Epiphany because that will lead to a different way home, a different way by which the Spirit of God directs us. Know this… it is a far better way.