Perseverance in the season of Epiphany
Thinking about what to write, conscious of people who are tired, anxious, ill or grieving, the word that came to mind was ‘perseverance’.
I write this on a gloomy Wednesday. It is 6th January and so the Feast of the Epiphany, a day to remember the 'wise men' from the east. You can read about them in Matthew 2: 1 - 12.
They followed a star, expecting to find a special king. To make that journey they must have needed much perseverance. Was it fuelled by hope? At the end of their journey, they found a young child with his parents, in an ordinary house in Bethlehem, on what was presumably for Mary, Joseph and their son Jesus, an ordinary day. Were the wise men disappointed? No, they were overwhelmed with joy. It was as if God opened a window in heaven to enable them to see what others could not. It was an ‘Epiphany’ moment. Did the memory of that revelation encourage them on their journey home ‘by another way’?
In lockdown just now, we’re not allowed to make unnecessary journeys, but the pilgrimage of faith continues even if we’re stuck at home. At times, that pilgrimage is tough. Perseverance is needed to keep going, one step or one hour at a time, perhaps clinging on to faith by the skin of our teeth and looking for glimmers of hope to lighten our darkness.
I love the story about the 19th century Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson. As a child in Edinburgh who was often ill, he used to watch the lamplighter lighting the gas streetlights below his house at dusk. He once said, "here comes the man who punches holes in the darkness". What a wonderful picture for the Epiphany season which lasts until Candlemas on 22 February.
Epiphanies are when we experience a hole punched in darkness so we see something or someone in a new light. What we didn't or couldn't see before is revealed to us. Long ago, Jesus, the light of the world, was born into an ordinary family. Jesus came to punch holes in the darkness, to light the way we must take.
While thinking about this, an old hymn keeps singing in my head. Perhaps God is reminding me of it, because it could be a way to punch a hole in the darkness for one of you reading this. It was written in 1833 as a poem called ‘The Pillar of the Cloud’ by a young priest called John Henry Newman. His return home from Italy was delayed, first by illness, then by lack of a boat home. When he finally got a ticket on a sailing ship carrying oranges, his frustration was increased when the ship was becalmed for a week. It was then that he wrote the poem which later became a hymn. I have found it encouraging during uncertainty or grief. Here is the 1st verse:
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
lead thou me on;
the night is dark, and I am far from home;
lead thou me on;
keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
the distant scene: one step enough for me.
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