Depression and SAD (seasonal affective disorder) are common this time of year. Between the high expectations that are often placed upon families during the holidays and the shorter, darker, cold days, winter takes its toll on people. Because of cold, ice, and snow, we tend to exercise less, eat more, and get less exposure to sun. Add to the stress factors the increase in colds and flu, and winter can be difficult. With the recent cold spell, it's even been hard on our formerly Kansas cats (not a reference to any specific Kansas college or sports team.)
Our young gray cat has been very impatient with the cold weather. He really wants to go outside but since temperatures went well below zero, even if we offer to let him go out, he refuses. The other night he was crying so loud and long that I decided to let him try going out. I only had time to get the storm door shut because he walked out a few steps and immediately turned back. I opened the door and he came in all puffed up and growling at the cold!
I'm sure he isn't the only one that has felt that way recently. The long dark and cold days of winter are hard on everybody. But in spite of the snow and cold, if you pay attention, you will notice that the days are noticeably longer than they were before Christmas. There is more light each day signaling that Spring will come even if it doesn't yet feel that way.
January 6th marked the day of Epiphany and the season of light that comes before Lent. It is traditionally marked by the star that the Magi followed to Bethlehem to the baby Jesus. But even more than that, the light of the season of Epiphany is the light John writes about in the beginning of the Gospel.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:5) The darkness symbolizes the brokenness of the world and everything that is our inability to live lives without sin. The light that shines in the darkness is Jesus himself. And so Epiphany focuses our attention on the incarnation - God born among us and taking on human form in the birth of Jesus. The stories of the season focus on the stories of the gospels that make clear that Jesus is God with us. It begins with his baptism this Sunday and the declaration that Jesus is God's own beloved Son.
No matter how cold, dark, or hopeless things seem, the world is forever changed because we are not alone. We don't have to wait for aliens to make contact to know this. And the God that comes among us comes not as some formless, unseen force or as something so strange that it is frightening or unknowable. With Epiphany, we celebrate that God came in the baby Jesus that was born in the stable and grew up walking this earth just like us. Jesus is God feeling our fears, tears, laughs, joys, pain, and even death. Jesus is God's great gift of love that will never leave. Even if we turn away, God is still here.
This is how much God loves us, that even while we are still broken and unable to make things right, Jesus came to save the world. As John writes, in Jesus was "life, and the life was the light of all people". Jesus didn't come to people who had it right, but into even the darkest corners of our hearts and lives, bringing grace, forgiveness, and love. There is no place or person too dark, cold, sad, or hopeless to keep out the love of God in Jesus. And once here, Jesus promises that never again will we be alone. Read John 1:1-5
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