We are now in the season of Epiphany; a time to mark the gradual lengthening of daylight, and to carry our celebration of God’s manifestation to us in the Christ child forward into a new calendar year. This year—as in every year—we face many unknowns. In all that will unfold during 2026, we are called to remember God’s companionship with us. God’s ongoing conversation with us, God’s loving presence, abides. It is not contingent on the choices we make or the details of the world we inhabit.
As a buttress for this reality, I offer this poem by Madeleine L’Engle, titled First Coming:
He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He dines with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not waittill hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.He came to a world that did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
Happy Epiphany,
Title: Interior of the Church of the Light; Date: 1999; Artist: Tadao Andō (b. 1941); Building: Church of the Light; Object/Function: Architecture; City/Town: Ibaraki; Country: Japan; Scripture: Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41; John 3:14-21; John 12:20-36; Matthew 4:12-23; 1 Peter 2:2-10; Romans 13:11-14. Notes: “Mr. Ando has shown an ability to suffuse rooms with light in surprising ways. One of his most famous projects is the Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church in Ibaraki, Japan, which is known as the Church of the Light because of the cruciform-shaped opening in the concrete wall behind the altar.” [from The New York Times, March 30, 2014.] — “Dwelling in a house is a search for the mind (kokoro) as the locus of god, just as one goes to church to search for god. An important role of the church is to enhance this sense of the spiritual. In a spiritual place, people find peace in their mind (kokoro), as in their homeland.” [ Jin Baek, Nothingness: Tadao Ando’s Christian Sacred Space. Routledge, 2009. ] — Tadao Ando was the recipient of the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1995. — Photo by Attila Bujdosó. Permalink: https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55848 (Use this link to refer back to this image.)
