Epiphany and Lent speak to one another

Tomorrow is the last day of the Epiphany season; those days of wild stars and journey, of new sight, sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful, sometimes a poignant mingling of the two.

If you’ve read my two earlier posts, Bending Into Advent and Portals to Joy, you’ll know that sight has been much on my mind during the seasons of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany.  In Advent I had eye surgery and in Christmas I rejoiced in the increasing freedom that recovery brought.  In Epiphany through some strange reversal, a film covered the lens of my eye and in Lent it will be burned away.

We usually imagine bright burning in Epiphany and shadows in Lent.  But aren’t reversal and upside down-ness, part of our story?  And don’t all the seasons of our year and our life speak to one another round and round in time, and in life, that can only be told in a circle.

In worship on Sunday, I heard the words from Luke 18:35-43.   First, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection for the third time.  Then, on the road to his Jerusalem destination, the place where he will offer himself, he comes upon a man asking to be given sight.  “Let me see again”, the man petitions.  Yes, Jesus responds, you have faith enough to believe that I can do this thing.  Yes, you can see!

I loved this text’s mingling of the sombre hints of Lent and the startling arrival of clear sight.  Don’t we know, if we look back, that often, inner sight is preceded by a dark time.  Here, on the threshold between Epiphany and Lent, I am stirred by the sense of reversal I’ve experienced. Dimmed in the season of light, I wait, with some apprehension, for the darkness through which I may come to see.

What word or phrase in this text shimmers for you?

_{Image by fietzfotos Pixabay}