It’s dark outside but I can’t see any stars This is a bit of an irony, because today is Epiphany, the day on which we celebrate the Magi visiting the infant Jesus. The star stops over the place where the child lay and by its light Christ is revealed to the world beyond the manger. Liturgically speaking, this is the last gasp of Christmas, on the Twelfth Night after the big day. The decorations come down and the Wise Men worship, drop off their gifts and head home. Things go back to normal, on the surface at least. All you’ve got to do is find somewhere to keep your twelve drummers drumming.
It’s great to have a celebration of Jesus being revealed, but it’s also the time he goes into hiding, carried into Egypt by his parents to escape violence and politics. Traditionally this is the day on which Christmas decorations are put away, squirrelled away until next year. Even the gospels go quiet for a while, a biographical gap in their narratives in which Jesus surfaces for a cameo appearance at age 12, but for the most part stays hidden in the assumed mundanity of potty training and puberty. We don’t hear about Jesus learning to walk or talk, learning to carve wood or lug planks around building sites. Now, for those who follow the Church’s set readings, this hidden period gets glossed over. We dive back into the story with Jesus’s baptism as a 30-something and from there on in it’s a runaway train to Easter.
But it’s worth contemplating those silent years. Because I can sign up for the big theological ideas like the incarnation or the resurrection, for instance, or Pentecost overpowering Babel. Finding Jesus in the everyday? That I find more difficult. I appreciate the nativity sets and the Christmas trees and the carol services because they’re markers on the road and I’m bad at navigating my faith, and because Jesus gets hidden under the everyday when in fact he should be standing over it.
That’s an excuse though. I don’t keep my eye on the star enough. “Seek and you shall find,” Jesus says, but I don’t seek enough. Stuff gets in the way, all the stresses and complications of life on top of a toxic belief that Jesus isn’t that interested in this particular game of hide and seek. Honestly, he’s probably hiding behind the curtains with his feet sticking out and coughing loudly every time I get close, but still I think he’s run off to play with the other, cooler kids.
I appreciate this is all a bit messed up. These disruptive thoughts need to go; after the Wise Men encountered Jesus, they had to take a different route home because the original road was no longer a good idea.
And yet the only way forward is to keep looking, keep searching, and that means keeping eyes open, remembering that God maybe invisible but he’s not in hiding. Epiphany is a time of revelation, but that revelation is ongoing because Jesus didn’t just stop interacting with the world two thousand years ago; there’s still a chance to follow the star.
The Left Hand of Ehud: Matt's Bible Blog 
I always appreciate your honesty in your posts, I’m sure many can identify with the disconnect oftentimes on this faith journey. You really have such a gift of writing with so many interesting points of history that you work in alongside everyday life. God bless you and yours.