We have just come through Advent and Christmas, the business, the excitement, the work… and if you are Responsible for making the season happen, you know it is a lot of work.

and now we have arrived in Epiphany.

Epiphany in the church is first a day of recognizing the arrival of the Magi bringing gifts to Jesus. We can read that story in Matthew. But beyond that Epiphany is also the season between Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. Between two of the Business times of the Christian year.

all around us society is telling us January is hard, it’s the month of endless winter, credit card bills and too little sun.

but for a Christian following the path of our Christian Year, epiphany is so much more

Epiphany… if we want to look at the Christian year as a life cycle, is our childhood, where everything is in wonder, including the bible stories we read.

understanding the christian year as a life cycle helps us with our faith development. Advent/Christmas is our infancy, Epiphany our childhood, lent/easter our teen angst years, pentecost our coming to adulthood, and eventime or the season of pentecost is our maturing in faith before we arrive at the Reign of Christ Sunday at the end of our Christian year only to start it all over again in Advent.

So Epiphany is our childhood.

Epiphany, the word, means an “ah ha” experience, a new understanding, and excitement at something we never Realized before. This is the lightest time of our calendar and the Time when we have the fewest expectations of Ourselves and our faith. We can play with the idea of being part of god’s family.

so enjoy this season of epiphany. read the fun, lighthearted passages of the early parts of Jesus’ ministry where Everything was new to the people first hearing Jesus speak, the message was still something of wonder, and the world was full of possibilities.

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