ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Transcript:
It’s a New Year. Where do I start? How do I find something fresh to say about the Epiphany or the Baptism of Jesus? Either may be celebrated in church this Sunday. (You can find links to my previous thoughts on both these themes down below.)
One reading this Sunday takes us back to the beginning—the great poem of creation as told in the opening words of the Bible. It tells of the bringing of shape and order to a cosmos which was a dark, empty void. It tells of a God who speaks things into being: God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
As I was looking for a picture to accompany this week’s i-Llan, I found this one called ‘winter flowering’. It shows a yellow flower with glossy green leaves bright above the ground. ‘Winter flowering’ seems an appropriate theme to me, for the Epiphany season is about revelation, discovery, being surprised by something unexpected but good. It suggests the delight of finding joy in the midst of sadness, life where all seemed lifeless, like a flower blooming where you only expected bare earth.
For me, 2023 brought many surprises, not least that I am moving house. Deciding to leave our home of nearly forty years was difficult, but I’m trying to look on it as a move towards new discoveries: new neighbours, new paths to explore, a new garden to grow.
2024 is a gift which I have yet to unwrap. No doubt it will bring its own surprises with the usual mixture of good and not so good. What will be no surprise is that God still speaks life into my wintry spaces, light into my dark places. He speaks through the words of Scripture, in the secret words of my heart, in the kind words and actions of those I meet.
As earth begins a new turn around the sun, where, for you, are shoots of new life waiting to flower?
However wintry you may be feeling now, I offer you words that John Donne preached in the evening of Christmas Day 1624. I hope they encourage you:
God brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon.
You can read my thoughts on 'Where is the child?' from Epiphany 2023 here
and on '. . . by another road' from Epiphany 2022 here.
Thoughts on the Baptism of Jesus are here.
i-Llan is part of alisteningspace.uk
