Blooming Epiphany

​The Epiphany season started on January 6th and continues all the way to March 3.  (Lent and Easter are later this year.)  This gives us more readings from Luke’s Gospel – including Jesus being rejected in his home town, his call to go and fish for people, and what is known as Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, and some hard hitting sayings that are similar to their longer form in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. In Epiphany (the word means ‘revealing’) light is shone on Jesus to reveal more about him, and light shines from him into our lives, and our church, and the world.

---

Small Groups - I am planning for us to share communal insight as we meet in small groups between the services on the Sundays of February. (around tables in Acton Hall.)  I want to put some of my previous study about forgiveness into practice.  A key concept of forgiveness is ‘letting go’ and embracing the new. I’m convinced that there are narratives that we carry with us about Ascension that we communally need to ‘let go’ of. 

These narratives hold us back and hold us more in the past.  We can also be blinded to some of our greatest strengths. ‘Letting go’ can be quite difficult, can take time, and is a kind of grieving for what was.  Forgiveness theory talks about adjusting to a new assumptions, a new world view, coming to accept the present, and then be better able to grasp the future.   I am looking forward to your involvement, your sharing.  We might even have some epiphanies together.  

Happy Blooming Epiphany!! 
- Pastor Tim.