Star of Wonder, Star of Light, Star with Royal Beauty Bright. Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us through they perfect night.
Christmas is over and done. The kids have schlepped their gifts to their rooms. Colorful wrapping paper has gone out with the garbage and some of us have even begun taking down decorations. But our nativity story isn’t quite over.
But Epiphany is kind of the opposite of personal goals of fitness or career advancement or organization. Epiphany is all about how God reaches us – through no merit or work of our own, by the manifestation of Himself here on earth.
Epiphany is the gentle invitation of a good, good Father to follow along with Joy. Follow the light, follow the Star, follow the God of all Comfort, the Prince of Peace, the Almighty God – into and through our every day lives. It’s how our grasslike, vaporous days on earth are infused with eternal meaning. It is how we can bear witness to holy love and experience boundless joy. Only and ever because He invites us to more.
It’s the only resolution that lives up to it’s promise. The resolution to keep on following, through valleys and over hills and past a hundred hurts and a million mistakes. The only resolution that cannot be derailed on day six by the crumbling of resolve in the face of diet failures or the siren song of sleeping in. The only resolution that doesn’t require your feeble humanity to be enough because it hinges on the acknowledgement that it’s not. None of it is. Not for powerful Kings and not for humble housewives.
I can exercise my way to a six pack and still be weak. I can chase and achieve career advancement and still wonder what I’m worth. I can organize every cupboard in my house and still feel an inner chaos that consumes me. Epiphany tells me – I am more than the sum of what I do or do not do. My mistakes and my triumphs say less about me than the mercy of God himself reaching into my life, relentlessly chasing down my heart, claiming me as his own.
The state of my space, my family life, my career (or lack thereof), my health – none of that is a reflection of the state of my soul.
I look ahead at the empty calendar pages stretching across 2017 and see an invitation there. An invitation to joy, healing, hope. An invitation to wholeness. It’s the only resolution I make this year.
The resolution to follow His Star.
Celebrating Epiphany as a family? Check out these resources.
