The Church was bathed in light on the 6th as we celebrated the 12th night of Christmas or Epiphany. 20 people were there on a cold Thursday night. 12 lights were lit in each window, 84 in all not counting lights hanging in buckets on the middle pews and also lights strung along the gallery rail. We ended the service with people taking a candle and being blessed and dismissed outside.
As the sermon reminded us, "Epiphany is also the great season in which we discover all over again that we have been transformed by what we have seen." It is a "a season in which we look for the light flickering and dancing ahead of us, glimmering through the darkness in which we live, the darkness through which we travel." Epiphany is "to reveal .. "a man who is the true light who has come into the world."
"So we gather together tonight to remind ourselves that as inadequate as we feel, as bruised as we feel, as depressed or as sick as we may feel, that we are the ones who have been blessed to see the true light that has come into the world." "We are the ones that God is counting on to share the light, even as, in the words of Isaiah, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness covers the people." We can bring hope and courage and light into the darkness.