My mom asked me, “What’s the Epiphany MEAN?”... really? We go
through this every year, and I must admit that I often like to tell people that
we are still celebrating as we don’t take the decorations down till AFTER the Epiphany,
which falls in the first week of the new year. It gives us extra time not only
to take in the holidays and enjoy them, but it’s also a good cushion to give us
breathing time before the hard work of undoing begins.
It’s always a bit sad to take the decorations down, but the
Epiphany window is one we use as our excuse. So, when my Mom asked me to look
it up online, I did and as I suspected, it was associated with the three wise
men and their visit to the Christ Child. It’s what I had always thought-that
when the three kings visited the Christ child, it was called the Epiphany. The
revealing of the child to the gentile world was the revelation of Jesus as the
Son of God.
Of course, the epiphany is also defined as some moment of
revelation in our lives, where everything is illuminated for us. That is a rare
occurrence and shouldn’t happen on a yearly basis for most of us. But if it
does, and when it does, it should be a life-changing event.
I’ve had a few epiphanies in my life. At the time, you don’t
always know you’ve had this revelation. It reveals itself to you sometimes
instantly, but often as you grow to learn and understand what has been revealed
to you.
There was a time I was explaining to a trusted friend who was a
pastor, about a family argument years ago, and she just casually asked if there
had been any drinking in our family history. I just laughed because we had this
Black Irish larger than life background and yes, of course there was a lot of
drinking in my family history! My first thought was ...Doesn’t everybody have
this in their past? There’s usually SOME skeleton hanging over us all...Isn’t
there?
So that was an Epiphany and started a journey for me of
exploring and reflecting and learning. I’ve had some work epiphanies, and life
epiphanies, and some were great and wondrous, others were dark and prompted me
to rethink my life and my goals. But all of them served a great purpose and I’m
convinced that there is divine intervention in everything, as we hear even of
the fall of the sparrow being part of the plan in God’s kingdom.
And so I have great renewed respect for the celebration of the
Epiphany in our lives. We need to celebrate the coming of the New Year, the
birth of Christ celebrated throughout the globe and also the purpose of an
epiphany and the cause for celebration within the humble confines of our lives.
