Epiphany

Dear friends,

I read this poem at the end of my sermon last Sunday and several of you asked me for it, so here it is! Bruggemann captures so well the challenge of living faithfully and abiding in the Way of Jesus in the midst of our broken world. And I love the last line--may this year be for each one of us a time of "high hope" guided by the Holy Spirit!

Peace and blessings,

Nancy+

Epiphany



On Epiphany day,

     we are still the people walking.

     We are still people in the dark,

          and the darkness looms large around us,

          beset as we are by fear,

                                        anxiety,

                                        brutality,

                                        violence,

                                        loss —

          a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

We are — we could be — people of your light.

     So we pray for the light of your glorious presence

          as we wait for your appearing;

     we pray for the light of your wondrous grace

          as we exhaust our coping capacity;

     we pray for your gift of newness that

          will override our weariness;

     we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust

          in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact

        your rule through the demands of this day.

        We submit our day to you and to your rule, with deep joy and high hope.

For over thirty years, Walter Brueggemann (1933-2025) combined the best of critical scholarship with love for the local church in service to the kingdom of God. A professor emeritus of Old Testament studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, Brueggemann authored over seventy books. Taken from his Prayers for a Privileged People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2008), p. 163.

Photo Attribution: Pittman, Lauren Wright. Shining Hope, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57077 [retrieved January 9, 2026]. Original source: Lauren Wright Pittman, http://www.lewpstudio.com/.