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Prayer is a path when there is none.

Pray early and pray often;
hug early and hug often;
laugh early and laugh often.
They're all good for your mind, good for your soul and good for your muscles.

Guideposts Magazine.

Sunday 7 February
Readings: Revelation 4 and Luke 8:22-25

Ordinary time

The Gospel reading today takes me back to the days when I taught in Sunday School. There was an action song, “With Jesus in the boat you can smile at the storm”.

If we think of ourselves as a boat and our voyage through life – whether we sail on calm or stormy waters, where is Jesus?

Is he at the helm, steering, taking control – or asleep – waiting to be awakened by our prayers? Do we only wake him, that is talk to him, when the waters are turbulent, or do we have an ongoing conversation all the time? Are we sure that Jesus is in the boat? Have we asked him aboard, or left him there on the shoreline while we cast off into the waters on our own?

In the Church year we have just moved from Epiphany to “ordinary time”. Another question to ponder is this: Can any time be ordinary with Jesus. “Epiphany” means a showing or revelation – in the season of Epiphany we think of those occasions when Christ’s glory was revealed.

We thought first of the Wise Men, those travellers who followed a star and brought their gifts to the infant Christ. After seeing the glory of God shining in the face of the Christ child they returned to their own country by another way. That was to escape the wrath of Herod but also because, in the words of TS Eliot, they could not longer be at ease in the old dispensation. We don’t know what happened to them after that. Did they, as they journeyed on, remain full of joy or did they move from their epiphany moment to ordinary time? Did things become humdrum, routine – so that they maybe began to wonder about the authenticity of the experience? Or perhaps life crowded out the joy and excitement of that moment. Who knows?

What about the disciples who were with Jesus when he came up out of the waters of baptism and a voice thundered “This is my Son, the beloved”. We know they followed Jesus and witnessed other epiphanies and saw the miracles and heard the teaching - and yet, they were slow to understand on so many occasions.

Then there was the wedding in Cana – the first miracle of Jesus that is recorded in John chapter 2. For some the miracle of water changed into wine probably just meant a great party, but John tells us the disciples saw his glory and believed in him. And yet – these were the same disciples who were at the baptism – yet they still had a lot of learning and growing in faith to do. There were moments of awareness and insight, like the time Peter declared Jesus as the Christ. Yet, when the chips were down they forsook him and fled.
Had they passed from their epiphany moments into ordinary time?

Jesus still turns water into wine – something changes when we see his glory and he changes something in us. A line from a song was going around in my head – “I saw your face and I ascended out of the commonplace into the rare”. I was trying to remember the song, then I was in conversation with a colleague about church organists and their repertoires. She said her organist had, on the previous Sunday, played the tune “Stranger in Paradise” – and that was the song title that was eluding me! Seeing that face and ascending out of the commonplace into the rare – it’s a song about falling in love of course – but, if I might put it this way, how “in love’ with Jesus are we? When we see his face and the glory of God that shines from him (in our imagination, or in that spiritual sense of seeing) do we know how it feels to ascend from the commonplace into the rare? That’s what happens in epiphany moments. Something ordinary becomes extraordinary – the ordinary stuff of life is transformed. Some of us have had our epiphany moments – or maybe times we would described in other ways, such as:
• Conversion
• Being born again
• Meeting Jesus
• Being baptised in the Holy Spirit

We needn’t worry too much about the terminology or about whether these and other phrases describe the same thing or slightly different experiences. What matters is for each of us to have a moment – or moments – somewhere along our journey of faith when we see who Jesus truly is and something changes for us. That doesn’t mean we’ll always be on the mountain top. It doesn’t mean we’ll never have to face the difficult decisions, or the situations of loss, or the anxieties, stresses and strains of life. It doesn’t mean we won’t have struggles to face and battles to fight. It does mean knowing Jesus is in it with us and knowing the Holy Spirit’s anointing and filling and empowering to help us in every situation.

Perhaps some of us have never had that epiphany moment or that sense of Jesus stepping off the pages of the Bible to be with us, or stepping into the boat with us, or that sense of the Spirit moving upon us. Maybe for some life is always ordinary – so do you like it that way? It’s safe and predictable after all. Or do you long for the change that Jesus can bring? Jesus didn’t come into the world to leave it as it was, nor does he come to us to leave us as we are.

There’s another song “Love changes everything” – and it does. The love of God as revealed to us in Jesus is the gift that will transform the most ordinary life into something beautiful and rare. God sends the Holy Spirit to begin a work in us to change us into the person God created us to be. That begins the moment we invite Jesus into the boat – into our lives, acknowledging him as Lord – asking him to take the rudder and steer us on the course that God wills for us.

Who is this Jesus? “Who is this man?” – that’s what the disciples asked. He’s the Lord of all creation, this man who demonstrated divine power over the elements. He is the one who stills the storm and calms our fears. He doesn’t guarantee there’ll be no turbulence in our lives, but he does promise to be there with us in the middle of it all An epiphany moment for us might be just recognising Jesus with us in the boat – just realising that he is there in whatever situation we are going through that’s troubling us at the moment. Or it might be something more exciting – like getting caught up in worship and praise so that we can almost see and touch that worship that goes on continually in heaven.

However ordinary or extraordinary our lives are, when we truly accept Jesus as Saviour and commit our lives to him as Lord, the process of transformation begins in us, to be perfected at the last when go to be with God in glory

Glynis Hetherington