Epiphanytide Devotionals

Dear readers, in this penultimate daily devotional, we close our Epiphanytide season.  We also step through a major liminal threshold as we pass from the Advent/Incarnation/Epiphany focus of our Christian liturgical calendar to the Lent/Easter/Pentecost focus.  Both...

Happy Last Sunday of Epiphany ya’ll!  Seriously, that’s the official prayer book designation for today!  By tradition we close Epiphanytide with the greatest Epiphanic moment of Jesus’ ministry short of the cross and empty tomb, His Transfiguration!!  But since we’ve...

It has been my honor to introduce you to many varied Christian personages throughout these reflections and devotionals, many you already know at least by reputation.  It is my honor to introduce you to our last saint, one you may not know, but one of our most...

Late last year I saw a friend in the Homestead Court Club weight room.  As he was leaving I said casually, “Take care.  See you back soon!”  His reply?  “No, not in here for awhile!”  Curious, I asked him why.  His answer fascinated me.  He explained he was initiating...

All Saints enjoys some spectacular hymnody!  Two of my favorites are I Sing a Song of the Saints of God and For All the Saints.   Lesbia Lesley Scott (1898-1986) penned Sing to entertain and teach her three young children more about All Saints Day.  Evidently it...

I’d like to close our liturgical calendar circle by re-visiting the final significant holidays of the Christian year we missed previously.  Come fall harvest time, as agricultural societies the world over frantically harvest their crops and autumnal leaves adorn...

This descriptor appears in Holy Scripture some 144 times.  6 of those usages involve arms.  Others modify walls or other dividers either physical or spiritual.  But this descriptor by far is reserved for modifying only one essential element of human...

Anyone who knows me well knows my disinclination for late 1960’s/early 1970’s American pop music, some of which tragically made its way into the Episcopal church of my childhood.  While Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind performed by earnest young south Tampa mothers...

Breaking News….we interrupt this Epiphanytide to update you that….Mercury is retrograde until February 21st.  February’s full moon this year is on the 27th of this month.  I’m also sure some planets will soon be aligning….blah(things) blah (are) blah (really)...

I ask for your patient indulgence, dear readers….there is simply too much quality Transfiguration to squeeze into one devotion only!  Let’s view some more outstanding Christian visual, theological art today.   Transfiguration, Galilee.  Drive with me up a...

I ended the Lenten and Eastertide daily reflections on the 50th Day of Eastertide, or more popularly known, Pentecost.  To catch up please see here and also here.  Let’s step away this week from Epiphany and take a look at what we missed during that long season we...

With all due respect to Bill Murray and (especially South Carolina’s) Andie MacDowell, let’s skip the Groundhog Day references today because, well, we’ve been living that feature for the past year!  (No groundhogs were harmed in the making of this devotional)  No,...

I…am…deeply…chagrined.  Embarrassed.  Guilt-ridden.  I must apologize to each of you, dear readers, to God and to my family.  The shame is…overwhelming.  I have failed you.  I (choke) forgot.  I (sniff) forgot the birthday commemoration of the greatest poet ever to...

Today is the Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany.  We are past mid-point of Epiphanytide with an earlier Easter, and our Sunday lections invited thoughtful epiphanic reflection.  I’d like to privilege just one short but powerful couplet from today’s Psalm,...

We spent much time during Lent and Eastertide earlier this year reflecting together upon claiming time itself as sacred, exploring a variety of spiritual practices further aligning our daily lived experience with Christ.  The goal of every practice, every habit,...

This past week we’ve been reflecting together on who reveals God to us.  Who manifests God’s divine presence to us in those epiphanic moments of encounter?  Of course God can do that as God so wills, and we’ve explored the Trinitarian mystery of God’s...

Yes class, today we solve for church!  Yesterday I made a shocking claim, quoting Pastor Bill Hybels, that the local church is the Hope of the World.  I qualify that today to include my belief that any and all congregations in all their myriad forms compose the Body...

God loves to surprise me.  There are some life partners, some life legacies, some fellow pilgrims on life’s long and winding road we can anticipate, see and expect.  There are many we work hard to cultivate on our team because we want or need them in our lives.  But...

In an odd twist, we won’t be focusing upon today’s Feast Day in the Episcopal Church’s saint calendar, but today’s observance proffers a great launching pad!  Today we commemorate Timothy and Titus, companions and disciples to Saint Paul who both became bishops and...

One week after the first church pillar, Peter, comes the other twin Christian tower.  Today we mark the Conversion of Saint Paul the Tardy Apostle, Apostle to the Gentiles, and perhaps among the primary reasons any of us are Christian at all.  Oddly, he only has two...

Today’s Third Sunday After the Epiphany readings are brief, compressed and summary in their liturgical form but epic in inference to our lives.  Let’s take them in turn for our devotional today… I am beyond convinced the Book of Jonah is NOT a usual prophetic book. ...

Not all saints inhabit distant antiquity.  For Episcopalians, today is the Feast Day of Phillips Brooks, Priest, Bishop, Homilist and Hymnist.  Brooks belongs to the 19th century, 1835-1893, a period of sustained turbulence for mainline American Protestantism.  He was...

Elemental.  Raw.  Energetic.  God’s dynamic, energizing, and powerful presence, personal and palpable, whom scripture most often refers to as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God or simply the Spirit.  We explored a bit of the Spirit in the closing days of Eastertide,...

Doctor James Allen Francis (1864-1928) penned perhaps the greatest summation of Jesus’ life in several hundred years.  Allen was born one hundred years before me in Nova Scotia, called to the pastorate at 21 years old (I like him already!).  He served New...

Oh, gwwaaaddd…if I had a dime for every time in the last six months we’ve heard that statement from a slightly frowning, forehead creased in earnest yet empathetic head-slightly-cocked leaning forward politician, we’d be rich!  I note that what usually follows that...

So there I was (this is how we start personal stories in our family) just after a very fun Christmas.  For reasons beyond the scope of this devotional space, I was full tilt towards a Personal Pity Party.  You know the PPP refrain…I’m not important to anyone, no one...

Today is the Feast Day of the Confession of Saint Peter, another of the significant saints’ days in the Incarnation cycle.  While Peter and Paul are traditionally celebrated together on June 29th, (and Paul’s Conversion is coming up in a week’s time) each receive...

הִנֵּֽנִי׃ in Hebrew (pronounced Hin-NEIGH-nee), one of the most impactful responses in scripture.  Here I am.  The root appears 318 times in the bible, this compound response about 30 times.  In variant forms Abraham, Moses, Samuel (today’s Old Testament reading),...

Once again I am enjoying daily readings from Robert Wright’s excellent Daily Office Readings from the Early Church.  I especially appreciate how different, and how erudite, the early church mothers and fathers were in explicating Christian faith to the world.  Without...

A second beloved Epiphany hymn once again hails from 19th century England…boy were they busy composing hymns then!!  Anglican priest and bishop Reginald Heber composed Brightest and Best Are the Sons of the Morning in 1811 for his parish in Shropshire, England.  The...