I was asked to write this article on Epiphany by Chip, and in all honestly my first question was, “Chip… what is Epiphany?” You see, most of the great folks I work with have a Methodist or Anglican background. I, on the other hand, have a Baptist background, and we Baptists don’t celebrate Epiphany. When I asked Nicolet, “What is Epiphany?” she laughed and said, “Chip probably doesn’t remember you’re a Baptist.”
His arrival astonished our human expectations. Matthew describes it in this way: “‘They will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’)” (Matthew 1:23). God came to earth in Jesus Christ to be with us. We have the privilege of traveling through life with the greatest Teacher, Friend, and Savior we could ever know.
The new year is a great time to commit yourself to spiritual disciplines, and one of the most important disciplines of the Christian life is reading the Bible. We encounter the Bible when we go to church, and attending public worship is itself a key Christian discipline. Private reading, however, is edifying in its own way; and that’s what I want to talk about here.
