Whew! That’s a big push since Halloween, All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Christmastide and now, the Eve of the Epiphany. A contested and elongated national election, a new associate Supreme Court justice, a third pandemic wave, two vaccines approved in record time, at least three meteorological and cosmological events, two significant Space X/NASA mission launches (we’re back in space!), a few late season hurricanes, Lord knows how many school closures/changes/amended learning strategies, and the change into a new year from a very old year. Whew.
For me, the anchoring calmness of our Christian faith involves surrendering my life patterns to the wisdom of the Christian calendar, or in other words, allowing God to claim my hours, days, weeks, months and years. God redeems time itself for He created chronological time to flow as it does. God provides the gift of the present moment until God decides in His gracious provision that our
fleeting moments are completed and we enter the eternal moment with Him in perpetuity. These holiday moments are precious, short and sometimes stressful amongst the joy, other times joyous amongst the stress. As you wish!
Before we transition into the Feast of the Epiphany and the Season After Epiphany, Epiphanytide, I want us to pause together. Go backwards from this screen to quickly scan the daily devotional titles we list in ascending chronological order by date. Do you remember any of them by title? Are there any you’d like to re-visit? And please do! Have you worshipped with our ECOT or your own congregational virtual video resources we’ve all labored so hard to provide? If not, and if so, they are uploaded for awhile now. Why not go back and catch up, pacing yourself so it’s not merely binging like a Netflix series. Those Lessons and Carol services Mother Emily created are super-great for singing, very soothing and creative. Treat yourself! Any holiday items we were not able to treat here that you’d like to pursue further? We’ve certainly covered a lot of ground…theology, hymnody, worship, history, scripture galore, liturgy and culture, to name but a few. If we missed something due to space limitations (why do we hang mistletoe, why was holly the first wood in the greenwood, how did we get tree ornaments, why is red and green so popular at this time of year, not to mention the epochal Scottish new year festival called Hogmanay…now THOSE guys know how to celebrate a year change, goodness sakes!) why not do some exploring on your own?
The gift of the present moment is the only gift we can truly inhabit right now, and always. I invite you to take full advantage of it. And a sincere, heart-felt gratitude to each of you choosing to spend some of your precious present moments with me here. I love composing these devotionals, and so deeply appreciate you joining me in them. We continue both tomorrow for Epiphany/12th Night itself as well as throughout Epiphanytide. May the Lord bless and keep us dear readers!