Christmas is pretty much put away by this time of the year although you still do see the occasional set of unlit lights still hanging on the eaves of houses. In the church office we are already turning our thoughts to Lent and Easter and somewhere in the middle of all that Epiphany just seems to get lost. It seems to be the lost season of the church year, yet the theme of Epiphany is discovering the presence of God, something all of us are seeking in our daily lives. The problem though is no matter how diligently we seek God, most often we experience very little and what we do find just leaves us hungry for more.

The answer to this "Hunger and thirst for righteousness" (Mat. 5:6) is what we address in our readings during Epiphany. The word itself means the experience or manifestation of God. In the lessons we journey along with the disciples an prophets as they come to understand just who Jesus is and through him and God's Spirit experience the presence of God. Sadly for many this experience of God's presence is elusive. As one young woman in my confirmation class put it; "all I am asking is for God to speak in such a way that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is real." She is asking for an epiphany and the way I read the Bible God has promised just that.

So where do we go wrong? What should we be looking for? A few weeks ago three of the women of our congregation spoke of their personal experiences with God. It was a personal and powerful service. Agnes told a sequence of stories about different stages of her life. As she finished each piece she said; "and the epiphany was..." and proceeded to tell us how God had revealed himself in each of these events. Most of her revelations came through other people. People she believes God has spoken through and put in her life to help her move along the way toward Christian maturity. As Agnes showed us one of the major ways God speaks to us is through others. one of the difficult truths given to us in the New Testament is that God has chosen to work through people. The hard part of this is that most often this is not what we desire, we want miraculous intervention. This did not seem to be the way God spoke to Agnes though I feel certain that as she looks back she would certainly say that that is just what it was.

Reflecting further on what had been said I realized that each of these women had talked about experiencing God in different ways. Cynthia spoke about the way God had spoken to her through prayer. How she progressed from a halting way of internal prayer that seemed to be one way, to a joyous conversation with God spoken aloud. As she progressed she not only grew bolder as her experience of God deepened as she began to recognize all of the ways God responded to her.

God began asking her to pray for things and people she had not even considered, women in her non church relationships and people she knew intimately who were fighting illnesses of which even they were not yet aware. God's response to her prayers came in many ways, from a friend responding to her needs to the time when she prayed for guidance and all of a sudden her mind was just filled with all sorts of thoughts that spoke specifically to her need. All of these are epiphanies, ways which God manifests in our lives and in doing so enriches us and guides us.

Finally Nancy spoke of the many years she had lived with abuse believing that although God might care that the distance between them was too great. Things finally progressed to the point where she began to believe that her abuser's claim that all of this was happening because God willed it. Seeing how others around her seemed to have a deeper relationship with God she too began to hunger and thirst. Her awakening to God's presence, her epiphany came when she began to read a one year Bible someone had given her for Christmas. in one of the dull often skipped portions of the Bible she came upon a passage that showed the claims of her abuser to be an evil misrepresentation of God. With this epiphany God's word was opened to her in a new way and has been a firm guide as she began to rebuild her understanding of a God who not only loved her but had desperately been trying to break into her life for many years.

The Bible, prayer and the people God puts into our lives are just a few of the ways that epiphanies happen. The first thing we need to believe is that God does speak. The second thing is to understand that God speaks in so many different ways. We need to be open and seek God's voice in everything that surrounds us. One thing I do know is that often God's way of reaching us can be totally unexpected. Something we are tempted to brush aside as a coincidence. My experience is that there are to many coincidence for all of them to BE coincidence. My prayer is that we all become more attuned to the epiphanies in our own lives and draw closer to God through that experience.

Pastor Jim Bliss
February 2010