Epiphany

Light and Faith Across the Year

Twelve days after Christmas the decorations are packed away, I’m back at work, kids are back at school, and the long month of January looms. I left the lights up around my front door, but the cozy feelings of Christmas have faded. This is normal. The Christmas magic I’ve worked to create for my family has a pretty short half life. Like light, it’s impossible to capture and preserve.

Light cannot be trapped. Even between two mirrors, a beam of light will bounce back and forth but eventually decay to heat because no mirror reflects light perfectly. Since light can’t be saved it has to be newly generated from an energy source–for example from nuclear fusion in a star, or through heating a metal filament until it glows, as in an incandescent light bulb.

Without frequent renewal, faith, like light, becomes dim. I’ve seen it flicker in myself, and I’ve watched it fade in friends and family and people I admire. When that happens I miss the times when we functioned like mirrors for each other, allowing our light to bounce back and forth between us, making it last a little longer. I believe that serving as mirrors for one another’s faith is something we do for each other when we worship together.

Twelve days after Christmas, the coming of the Magi is remembered in churches that observe a liturgical calendar. On this Feast of the Epiphany, I’m thinking of them. The Three Wise Men are known for their gifts to the baby Jesus, but perhaps they should be just as well-known for their faith. Scripture doesn’t say where they came from, what prophet they were reading, or whether they ever knew Jesus’s teachings after he began his ministry thirty years later. But they had apparently come some distance, and were willing to travel wherever it took and for as long as it took to find Jesus. They prepared for the journey by study, they undertook it by faith, and they brought gifts with them because of their confidence that their journey would end in the fulfillment of prophecy. And when the star that went before them stood over where Jesus was, they “rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”

I wonder whether their joy lasted. Did they look back over their shoulders on the way home, needing one more glimpse of the star? Did they search the sky for it later when the light that the Christchild lit in their hearts inevitably began to fade?

How does a person develop faith and keep it shining over the course of a lifetime? This is the question I’m thinking about as I pack away strings of lights and star ornaments. Paul said faith is a spiritual gift. Alma said a desire to have faith is enough at first. Jesus said faith as small as a mustard seed can become enough to move mountains. But keeping faith is seldom easy. President Harold B. Lee said a testimony is as hard to hold as a moonbeam, and it must be “recaptured every morning of your life.”

At times I have felt that among the spiritual gifts Paul lists in his letter to the Corinthians, I didn’t get much of the gift of faith. I may have started as a small seed like everyone does, but I don’t feel that my faith has grown into a large mustard tree like the kind seen in ancient Palestine. Nevertheless, I’ve realized that in fact I do have the gift of faith. I’m just not a mustard tree. I may be more like a yew, an evergreen shrub that grows slowly but with great longevity. You have the gift of faith as well. Maybe you are like a red maple–strong and fast-growing. Maybe you’re like aspen trees, whose strength comes from being part of a collective. Maybe you’re a spruce, beautiful and fine-textured. Or maybe you’re like a palm tree whose seed takes a long time to germinate then grows to become tall and graceful. You might be a deciduous tree in a dormant phase. I have been that, too. Maybe you are still a sapling and not sure what you’ll become. In a favorite Christmas carol of mine, a poet imagines Christ as a source of shelter and nourishment: an apple tree.

Like the Magi, each of us is on a journey of uncharted paths and unknown length, navigated by faith. We carry gifts. Maybe your gift is something visible like teaching, performing music, or planning events. Other gifts are more private. Maybe you provide the gift of friendship to someone at church. Maybe the simple fact of your presence holds the door open for someone else. Maybe your gifts are most needed outside of Sunday worship, in visiting people who need to be ministered to. Maybe your gift is that you have faith like a mature and well-developed tree that provides for the needs of others. Whatever your gifts are, they can serve to amplify the faith of yourself and others.

The season of Epiphany is meant to remind Christians of the various manifestations, or “epiphanies” of Jesus’ divinity. This season, I long to renew my faith that Jesus came to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah, to bring good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. I want to keep faith in Jesus’ teachings to love God and one another, and to feed his sheep.

I want to renew my faith in the future. Jesus never preached despair. Remember what the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Israelites who were captive in Babylon? Even in that hopeless time he told them to build houses and live in them, to plant gardens and eat their fruit, marry and have children, and seek the welfare of the city where the Lord sent them and pray on its behalf, for in its welfare they found their own welfare.

Epiphany concludes as Lent begins, the season of preparation for Easter. I want to renew my faith in the ultimate promise that Jesus made to Martha and the disciples: “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”

It’s a whole year before another Christmas season. I’m asking myself how I’ll be able to keep the star in sight over the coming months. In other words, how does a person keep faith over life’s long journey? One way is to show up and share our gifts. Others are to re-read the stories and the poetry of the scriptures, to pray, to make good choices, to wrestle with hard questions, to find a friend to share my questions with, and to find meaningful spiritual practices, like spending time in nature and listening to sacred music.

The light from our closest star is freely given to all. Trees are perfectly tuned to receive it, as their little green solar panels absorb light and spin it into physical growth. Likewise, the light of God’s love is the energy source that builds faith. May we receive that light, renew it daily, and reflect it upon one another.

Emily Parker Updegraff lives in Wilmette, IL with her family and has published essays and poems in Exponent II, Dialogue, Irreantum, and other journals.

Art by James Tissot.