HAPPY EPIPHANY!

Those of you who have a background in liturgical Christian churches know that today, January 6, is "Epiphany"...the 12th day of Christmas...in Koine Greek, it's ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, or "manifestation" or "striking appearance"...

It's the day of the Theophany, which in Ancient Greek is (ἡ) Θεοφάνεια, Theophaneia, meaning "vision of God"...it's a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God as a human being in Jesus Christ...in Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally (but not solely) the visit of the Magi to the Christ child, and thus Jesus' physical manifestation to the Gentiles...

The Magi (or three Wise Men), who are celebrated on this day, may be my favorite Bible characters...they were persian magician/astrologers who, as far as we know, knew nothing of the Scriptures predicting the birth of a Jewish Messiah, and still found the Christ...they certainly didn't know that the Prophet Micah had said that He would be born in Bethlehem...

Now pertaining to Jesus – being born within [the town of] Bethlehem, of the Judean [district], during the days of Herod the king – note and consider this: Great ones (magi: from the Persian magus = great ones, who were often Persian priests; wise men; scholars; astrologers; royal advisors; or: magicians) from eastern regions birthed their presence into Jerusalem[Hebrew: City or Occupation of Peace and Wholeness]. They kept on saying, "Where is He being the one born 'King of the Judeans'? You see, we saw His star (or: luminous heavenly body; meteor; flame of light) in [its] rising (or: within the East, the place of rising; or: we, [being] in the east, saw His star), and we come (or: came) to do obeisance (or: to kiss toward, fall down and give reverence, worship and pay homage) to Him."
(Matthew 2:1, 2 - Jonathan Mitchell New Testament)

...somehow they knew about Him by charting the stars, or the zodiac, and were so excited about His birth that they travelled to a foreign country just to worship Him...not to convert to Judaism...not to learn about the Hebrew Scriptures...certainly not to become  "Christians", because that concept didn't even exist yet...these three mysterious men transcended religious and national boundaries, and were not only enlightened in the magical arts, they were also global visionaries...they intuitively recognized who Jesus was as a baby in the same way that the pagan Roman Centurian recognized Him as an adult...

Now when the man Jesus was born as a baby in Bethlehem of Judea during the reign of Herod the king, astrologers from the East came to Jerusalem to inquire about Him. These astrologers, or “Magi” originated from a religious caste among the Persians who were devoted to divination (or the practice of the magic arts) and to the interpretation of dreams. They came from Southern Arabia, where they had long maintained a tradition of Israelite Messianic expectation that had survived in the region since the days of the Queen of Sheba; and this tradition survived alongside their practice of astrology. When they came to Jerusalem, they began to ask around, “Where is He Who has been born King of the Jews? For we have charted His star in the East through our understanding of the zodiac and have come to worship Him.”
(Matthew 2:1, 2 - Matthew In The Now


"Epiphany" is also known as "The Day of the Lights"...the dictionary defines an epiphany as: 

"a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple,  homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience"...


I love the way the Concordant Literal Version translates Matthew 2:1, 2:

Now, at Jesus' being born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, lo! magi from the East came along into Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He Who is brought forth King of the Jews? For we perceived His star in the East, and we came to worship Him." 

How awesome is that?! "We PERCEVED His star in the East"...

Perception is everything...

The little cartoon at the top about "Breakfast at Epiphany's" cracks me up, but there is also a subtle truth to it...the more sensitive that you become to the phenomena of having an epiphany, so more you see EVERYTHING as a miracle...

The United Nations has named 2015 as 'The Year of Light'...my prayer for you today is that you will walk in revelation and enlightenment and a continual unveiling of truth, not just on January 6, but in every day of this New Year...I pray for you to have the ability to think outside the religious box, as the Magi did 2,000 years ago, that you are able to transcend borders, as they did, and that you will find a deeper revelation of God on your own terms by following their example...

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

THEO-LOGIC, CREATIVITY, AND SELF-ESTEEM

"Let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning..."...we've been talking about this concept of tuning into the original creative information about ourselves mentioned at least a couple of times in John's first epistle for many years now, and yet I feel like we've only begun to scratch the surface of what this really means for all of us...your life is a manifestation of a creative word from the Intelligent Designer..."In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God"...the Greeks called it the 'Logos' or the logic of God, as in "In the beginning was the Logos"...it's where we get the word 'theology' from...theos (Gr. for God)- logic...the logic of the Creator...the people who spoke Aramaic (the language that Jesus spoke) called it "willed action", as in 'In the beginning was willed action, and that willed action was with God, and that willed action was God"...

If you aren’t living from who you really are, and you're not walking in your deepest truth, manifesting yourself into the physical world as the being that God created you to be, then you're probably not enjoying your life very much...you were actually created, or rather spoken into existence, "in the beginning" (or, as the Concordant Literal New Testament puts it, "in A beginning")...but once you got here you began to hear many different voices telling you who you were, and not all of them were consistent with how you were fashioned to be from "in the beginning"...when we agreed with these voices, we developed over time a certain internal belief system about who we were, and our strongest psychological human drive has been to behave consistently with that system of beliefs...our subconscious has even been working throughout our lives to make sure that we all fall “in-line” with what we genuinely think our core identity is on a certain level...("Train up a child in the way HE should go [and in keeping with HIS INDIVIDUAL GIFT OR BENT], and when he is old he will not depart from IT." - Proverbs 22:6 - Amplified Bible)...unfortunately, many if not most of us were not trained up in the way that WE should go, according to our individual gift or bent, and as a result we have believed ourselves to be something that is the exact opposite of who we actually are...this false self-belief is often completely out of sync with what was said about us "in the beginning", and that's why it is not Logos-compatible (i.e. it is theo-illogical)...this distorted self-perception is generally at the core of all of our stress, pain, worry, and dissatisfaction in life...

Little by little we have to "let that abide in us which we heard from the beginning"...we can't make it happen, we have to let it happen...we have to strip away later after layer of psychological paint that has been added to our self-image...words, thoughts, beliefs that were only cosmetic in nature...they only covered up the truth...but when we continue to scrape away at every layer that is false, we eventually uncover our true identity...our "God identity" that finally feels "logical" to our souls, in the flow of the Logos that was spoken "in the beginning"...that's how we finally live authentically and in congruence with who we were created by God to be...once that happens, transformation is effortless (that's why John goes on in that chapter to say "you have no need that any man should teach you")...after that, it's easy (theo-"logical") to identify the true source and real meaning of ALL our limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging programs/agendas, and destructive cellular memory that restricts our full human potential…when we finally "let that abide in us which we heard from the beginning", it all finally starts to make sense...