My sister always has a prognostication about the New Year. Members of the family routinely contact her toward the end of the year to find out what has ‘come to her’ about the coming year. Sometimes she will say, “The New Year is going to be a year of change,” or “a year of balance,” or a “year of new possibilities.” This year, I have my own prognostication – I believe this is to be a year of adventure. I don’t exactly know why I think that. I just noticed that I was ending my email messages telling people I prayed that they would have a New Year filled with adventure. And, I didn’t contrive to write it – it just seemed to come unbidden from the plastic computer keys beneath my fingers.
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany – the great celebration of light and remembering the trek of the wise men and their generous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I love Epiphany, because it is for me, a feast filled with wonder. I live in a desert, not unlike the desert the wise men trounced through on their way to Bethlehem, and surely they were on an adventure! They believed in what they could not yet see, and because they believed, they set out. The terrain was unfamiliar, the destination unclear, the darkness of the night fierce.
They were like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Bilbo was asked to engage in an adventure. He was not the adventurous sort. He really preferred staying in his warm comfortable home with a nice cup of tea. There was no longing for a climb up the Andes for him. Yet, adventure was the very thing that saved him from his complacent, routine, life-without-drama existence, and helped him to live with verve and enthusiasm. The wise men and old Bilbo Baggins are beacons of light to me this Epiphany, and for the year 2017.
This is a year to step out, try something new, experience something different, show courage, tiptoe into territory that is unknown and may even carry danger. Sure, playing with our smartphones is familiar, turning on our favorite show is comforting, eating the same foods feels safe. But, might we not give a little care for the edginess of passion and pathos? When we put down the smartphone, do an activity we’ve never done before, change our pattern of comfort, we might be surprised to find that we really begin to live.
I say, let’s make this a year of adventure! Let’s be wise women and men, and believe in what we can’t see and set out because we believe. I think we’ll be amazed at what we find…
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany – the great celebration of light and remembering the trek of the wise men and their generous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I love Epiphany, because it is for me, a feast filled with wonder. I live in a desert, not unlike the desert the wise men trounced through on their way to Bethlehem, and surely they were on an adventure! They believed in what they could not yet see, and because they believed, they set out. The terrain was unfamiliar, the destination unclear, the darkness of the night fierce.
They were like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Bilbo was asked to engage in an adventure. He was not the adventurous sort. He really preferred staying in his warm comfortable home with a nice cup of tea. There was no longing for a climb up the Andes for him. Yet, adventure was the very thing that saved him from his complacent, routine, life-without-drama existence, and helped him to live with verve and enthusiasm. The wise men and old Bilbo Baggins are beacons of light to me this Epiphany, and for the year 2017.
This is a year to step out, try something new, experience something different, show courage, tiptoe into territory that is unknown and may even carry danger. Sure, playing with our smartphones is familiar, turning on our favorite show is comforting, eating the same foods feels safe. But, might we not give a little care for the edginess of passion and pathos? When we put down the smartphone, do an activity we’ve never done before, change our pattern of comfort, we might be surprised to find that we really begin to live.
I say, let’s make this a year of adventure! Let’s be wise women and men, and believe in what we can’t see and set out because we believe. I think we’ll be amazed at what we find…
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