Sunday was Epiphany. Epiphany falls somewhere between January 4 and 6 each year, so it doesn’t always fall on Sunday. This year, it does. Epiphany is all about light. The star in the sky that leads the magi to Jesus, the light of the world, “The true light, which enlightens everyone.”

Like the magi, we have wandered over the last year, sometimes across rough terrain and other times over smooth roads. Some of the journey may have resulted in rich spiritual blessings. Some of the journey may have resulted in losing our way. One would think that the light of the world, the true light, which enlightens everyone would be easy to follow. Yet, John tells us that, “The world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to his own, and his own people did not accept him.”

One of the problems is that evil, the brokenness of life that causes us to lose our way, doesn’t always look the same. If it was always the same thing, same situation, same temptation, same anything that caused us to lose our way, we could figure out how to address that. But we don’t always experience evil, the brokenness of life the same way.

The Gospel of John describes Jesus as the answer to evil, the emptiness and nothingness of our broken state. John describes Jesus as the Word of God. Then he says that this Word of God was with God and was God and all things came into being through him. In him was light, the light of all people and the darkness could not overcome it.