‘The Hope of the Magi’

My guess is that the New Year at The Villages is already much the same as last year: pickleball courts and tennis courts are packed. The starter has already marked everyone’s tee times for January and perhaps even for February. Folks have registered for yoga and aerobic classes. The new mats are unpacked. Healthy diet cookbooks are arriving from Amazon and Villagers are peering through the pages with New Year’s resolutions in mind. That is because if you’re like me, and the rest of the world, we have it locked into our minds that January is about making resolutions, about choosing to improve our lives, about making a new and better start for the year ahead. 

But the church has a different agenda. New resolutions don’t come until Lent. And this year Ash Wednesday doesn’t come until March 5. Then we will have plenty of time to decide what we want to do and not do with our lives. But now is the season of the Epiphany: A season of hope, of New Year’s expectations and not New Year’s resolutions. The Epiphany is a time to dream and imagine how the abundance of God’s mercy and love will impact us in 2025. The Epiphany is when we remember how the Star of Bethlehem, a star that few saw, filled the Magi with hope for a new world. 

So join us at Trinity Chapel on Sundays at 9 a.m. at Montgomery Center and re-image 2025 with us as we lock into our minds eye what it would be like to live this next year with the hope of the Magi. It’s been my observation over the years as a priest that when individuals and communities live out these Epiphany expectations, there is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Hopes and dreams do come true. This isn’t Jiminy Cricket theology to wish upon a star. This is Epiphany theology to expect God to be God, a God of transforming love. Come join us at the Trinity Chapel and experience the self-fulfilling prophecy that comes with dreaming and imagining that God is who He claims to be.