Like a Christmas Season afterthought, epiphanies transform us. And, if we are blessed by them, though the landscape be the same we will have new eyes (with thanks to Proust).
“God’s voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.” (Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song)
Most of us have shared those rare experiences when the veil between heaven and earth is transparent and we sense real communication between the two worlds. Stories we share about loved ones who have gone before us come to mind.
I’ll share several examples recounted over the last holiday break. My niece recalls how a couple of days before my brother’s death she saw him in a dream. He gave her a warm hug. When she asked him how he was doing, he shook his head and didn’t say. Two days later he was born to eternal life.
A brother-in-law recalls how after his father died in Saskatoon University Hospital his dad appeared to him. His father was wearing a plaid shirt when he appeared in the gold mine the son was working in up north. When the family collected my father-in-law’s clothing from the hospital, there was the plaid shirt.
The daughter of my niece relates how her little girl came across a picture of her grandfather when she was older and could articulate the event. My niece had been boiling soup in a pressure cooker and there was something of an explosion. Scalding soup was everywhere but on the baby. Her daughter now said, “I remember him. He protected me from the hot soup.”
The wisdom of this world can easily discredit some of these events and explain them away. But do we want to be “wise for a moment and foolish for eternity”? (John Tillotson)
Even in the often tragic events of this world as reported by our daily news, we can know the presence of a loving God who does not abandon the world. James Riordan said, “What I learned in Rwanda was that God is not absent when great evil is unleashed. Whether that evil is man-made or helped along by darker forces, God is right there, saving those who respond to His urgings and trying to heal the rest.”
Faith calls us to share our epiphanies and to be heralds of God’s love to the world. That is the mission of Christ and all who follow Him. “Comfort, oh comfort my people,” Jesus commissions us.
If we would be wise, like the three Magi, we must go on seeking the Lord. There is no epiphany without there first being a search. And if we learn to respond to God’s urgings we will be transformed.
Ray Lamontagne in Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs says,
“Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin’ gold
And like the sky my soul is also turnin’
Turnin’ from the past, at last and all I’ve left behind”.
