Daily Devotional • January 6
Epiphany
A Reading from Revelation 21:22-27
22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Meditation
Last year, none of our churches was interested in holding the Great Vigil of Easter. So on Saturday night, my family gathered around our home altar to light the New Fire. When the time came to strike the match, my husband switched off the book light he’d been using to read his Prayer Book, and I was caught off-guard by how really dark it was — and then by how terribly bright the light of one match could be!
We live in a world relentlessly filled by lights — the screen you’re reading now, headlights, street lights, overhead lights, LEDs, lamps, lanterns, flashlights, book lights. We’re also graced with the lights of nature: sun and moon and stars and fireflies. Light is everywhere.
But in Epiphany we remember that God’s glory is the only light, and the one lamp which contains it is Jesus. There is no other.
What I saw in our small Great Vigil, lighting the new fire, is that we live in a cacophony of lights, spiritually as well as physically. The brightness of Jesus doesn’t dim in the midst of them, but it can become hard for us to see him. If we’re really serious about following Jesus, there is nothing for it but to start turning off other lights—shut off the inner voices that care about other people’s opinions, tamp down the fear of being made uncomfortable, snuff out the duplicitous voice that wants to keep all the options open—and orienting ourselves entirely by the sight of the one true Light in the darkness.
Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Lagos – The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
Christ Church Episcopal, Tyler, Texas
