The Aha of Epiphany

 

New Year’s Eve is not something I celebrate. I don’t stay up until midnight. Some may find me a bit boring but since I was a young teen I’ve been more inclined to get up early on the first day of the new year and reflect. I am not one to make resolutions. I like to look back over the year: the highlights, the losses, the lessons, etc. Every morning is a chance to begin again. Reflecting on the whole year helps me remember what happened in my life when it became a blur. It’s a time to make lists, journal and pray. It’s a time to listen for God’s invitation on how best to invest my life in the days ahead. This can be a lovely time but it can also be convicting and lead to some necessary heart cleansing. It often takes me several days.

January 6 was Epiphany*. I did not grow up in a church culture that followed the Church calendar. I did not know Epiphany was a special day; I thought epiphany was an aha moment. It turns out it is both. So on the day of the Feast of the Epiphany I had an epiphany. Earlier in the week I had some news – news that sparked a bit of envy in me. I was confessing this to the Lord on January 6. While I was lamenting over my struggle with envy the Holy Spirit prompted me to remember Isaiah 43:18 – 19. I picked up my Bible and flipped to the passage. Someone else is getting what I have longed for but in Isaiah I am reminded that God is now doing a new thing in my life.

“Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in desert

and streams in the wasteland.”

Now. In my circumstances right now He is doing a new thing. One day over lunch with a friend I shared this. Her eyes widened. The same verse has been speaking to her. She told me that God made it clear to her that the “new thing” is internal. I needed that reminder. Often I am looking for the next thing, a new thing outside my circumstances, but God is always working a new thing inside me in the place where He has placed me. He wants to do a new thing for you too.

In the book Living into Community, Christine D. Pohl shares the words of Kevin Rains, Vineyard pastor, “How many times have I wished I were somewhere else where God was REALLY moving? How many times have I longed to be in a more beautiful place (with mountains or an ocean) and abandon the urban neighborhood where I live? How many times have I fantasized about the perfect fellowship where everyone got along like a perfect family.” Rains calls this type of longing “spiritual pornography” and declares it poison. The truth of this is jolting! It can be hard to break free of creating an idol of an imagined perfect life. Yet one must break free or be sucked into the deep muddy mess of this lie. Anyone else raising a hand here?

It reminds me of when I was a little girl and we moved to the country. Our house was newly built so the land around was a bit torn up – no landscaping, just dirt and trees. When it rained there would be big muddy patches throughout the yard. Of course, my brother and I had to go outside and explore wearing our galoshes. It wasn’t long before one of us would be helplessly standing on one foot while one boot was left behind stuck in the mud. We would try to help one another but inevitably ended up yelling for mom to come to the rescue. That picture pops into my mind when I think of Kevin Rain’s longing, so often matching mine, for a ‘perfect life’ and leaving the one I am living behind.

I have moved a number of times. Some of you have moved much more than I. If we are honest with ourselves, we have yet to discover whatever it is we long for with envy when we are looking for something better than this. Every place I lived or church I attended had challenges but there was also great good. Once I wrote down all the places I remembered living and made a list of what I appreciated and missed about each. Places I longed to leave at one time left imprints of beauty and joy in my life, I just had not appreciated them as much while living there.

This year I want my greatest longing to be directed towards God and the new thing He is doing in my life here and now. I leave with this verse from Ezekiel – a reminder that God deserves more than a divided heart. Ezekiel 11:19, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” The note in my Bible says, “God offers holiness to his rebellious people: a new heart wholly devoted and faithful to him alone and new spiritual empowerment to live only for him.” Anyone else want to celebrate 2022 by living into a new spirit with a heart of flesh? Would love to hear what you left behind in 2021 and what you hope to bring into 2022. He goes before us!

*“Now the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6”, writes Bobby Gross in Living the Christian Year (pp 83, 84), “brings this theme to culmination – the light of Christ made manifest to the whole world as symbolized by the Gentile Magi from the East. Thus the day of Epiphany and the season that follows complete what is sometimes called in the liturgical year the Cycle of Light.” He explains how this manifests in our current culture. “Epiphany is a season for seeing more of Christ’s glory by focusing on his life and mission. Simultaneously, it’s a time for making that glory better known to those around us. We bear witness to what we have seen and learned and experienced.”