Tuesday, January
10, 2017
Arise, shine;
for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. Isaiah 60:1(NLT)
In all my growing-up years we
attended a church that paid almost zero attention to the movement of the church
year. Ordinary time, Pentecost, and the
Feast of this saint or that were lost to me.
So, for me, epiphany held only the everyday meaning of an idea that
dawned.
These days Epiphany is more
than the arrival of an idea, it is the celebration of the true light of hope,
born in a manger to die for our sins, the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and in particular, the visiting Magi bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense
and myrrh to the child born a king.
A question I pondered a week
ago on Epiphany Sunday was: What kind of gift can you bring to light? It’s a good question, and it reminds me of
some of the very imperfect gifts I’ve given over the years. As a child I gave my Mom a bottle of ink on
Christmas. She was always writing
something, and it seemed appropriate to a 7 year old with a limited
budget.
For our second anniversary I
gave my new bride an electric can-opener.
(Whew…took a long time to live that one down!) Best
efforts – that was my default excuse for an unimaginative, unworthy
gift. But giving a gift sometimes
requires a little more than best effort; it requires sacrifice.
So, on the first Sunday of
this year, as usual, I sat in worship in my regular seat, first row, piano side
on the middle aisle…(and what good Methodist doesn’t always sit in the same seat week after week?) And as I pondered Eiphany, I had an
epiphany. Looking up towards the Lord’s
Supper table, I noticed the flame of the candle was perfectly reflected in the
lower center of the cross.
That light awakend my heart
anew to the truth that, in Epiphany, the appearing of a king born in a cattle
feeder, the light of the world illuminated the horrible darkness in which
humans live. It is the darkness of
terrorism, greed, grasping, and anger.
It is the darkness that one generation passes on to the next…and calls
it light.
And when God did something
about it – He sent us light for our darkness – we hung it on a tree at
Golgotha.
My epiphany was a vision of the
gift-light of God hanging on a cross.
And there’s something so wrong about that, it cries out from the pit of
my soul to do something…and I cannot.
How can you tell the light to get off the cross? You could try to stop seeing the light, turn
it off, snuff out the candle; but can you do that to the holy light? No! You
can’t turn off a wildfire, or the erruption of nuclear fission; how could you
hope to do that to the Source of light? And
Epiphany is my reminder that you can never overcome the light of God’s gift with
all the darkness the world possesses.
So what gift can I bring as a
21st century magi? The only
gift I can ever bring
that is an appropriate, worship-worthy gift is the same kind God gave…a
life!
The only life I have to give
is…mine! And, despite all our wishes to
buy Him off with our giving of gold, frankincense and bottles of ink, my life –
no more, no less - is all He requires.
For You Today
Today would
be a good day to remember that whenever light shines, darkness disappears. Pick up your candle…go light your world.
NOTES
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