Epiphany Stars

Tears rolling down her chubby little cheeks, my youngest wept in my arms. I tried to figure out what had happened. “Are you okay?” I asked, brushing my hands down her arms and legs, trying to feel for a bump or a cut. She turned her eyes to meet mine and cried, “I hate being the littlest.”

She cannot make herself the same age as her sister and brother. It will never happen. All she wants is to be a bigger kid so she can do the same things as her siblings. We all hate our littleness, the physical limits that we cannot escape. Being a human is a lifetime of being limited by our bodies. We cannot do certain things.

We cannot avoid pain. We cannot make ourselves better on our own.

Sometimes it seems like my daughter is right like the biggest and strongest always wins. I think about this when I think about issues of justice. Sometimes I feel like the wrong side is winning just because they have more power or more money or more strength.

And that is why Epiphany matters. The three kings went to find the new King of Israel. They went to the palace because a king should be in a palace. But he was not there. They found Jesus, the true King, sitting on his mother’s lap, helpless as a small child and yet more powerful than any earthly King.

In 1 Corinthians 1:25, the Bible says… “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.”

We expect God to behave like we would—to send in a strong person who would tell everyone what to do and who people would fear. God had a different plan, a plan to send a Son as a human baby to live with us and die for us.

Epiphany reminds us that God’s plans are not like our plans and true power is not always found in the places we expect to find it. It also reminds us that God can use anyone and anything to tell his Story, no matter how crazy we might think it is.