THE FIRST ORDINARY DAY

It’s Epiphany today, which means the day I drive to the end of my cul-de-sac without any of my neighbours’ Christmas lights to guide me home.

It is dark and cold. Some of the stars are out but even they seem a little dim tonight, as though they too know the festivities are over, and are just ever so slightly sad about that.

Epiphany is supposed to be the celebration of the magi visiting the baby Jesus. In some countries they chalk up a ‘KIII’ or a ‘CMB’ on the door as a sort of a blessing of the ‘three kings’ - Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Others have a special cake with a baby-Jesus-figurine baked into it. In this country (at least from my observations today) we pack away our Christmas stuff, and complain about going back to work.

But I think the wise men went home differently. Christmas must have changed them, as they skirted Herod’s palace, and cautiously headed East. What stories would they tell? How would they tell it? It intrigues me to think that they might have been sharing the news of the saviour, missionaries far from the action, long before the saviour had ever learned to walk or talk.

Well anyway. Epiphany it is, and a pretty good time of the year to ask how what’s been ‘revealed’ to us might change our world also. I’ve asked myself this question today, even in the cheerless cul-de-sac. What can I do to change the atmosphere? What am I bringing back from the Encounter of Christmas.

One thing’s for sure - I hope I don’t get back in the box with the plastic shepherds and the porcelain angels, waiting in the straw until next Advent.  The wise men went home and carried the story with them. They made a difference.

And that, I reasoned at the end of my road on the first ordinary day of the year, is probably what I should do.