Epiphany Stars: A Follow-Up Story

On the first Sunday of January, my church celebrated Epiphany, and I was the one leading the service.  For years, I had read about Epiphany stars--a practice early in the year, where participants choose a star with a word on it, and that word guides them through the year.

I decided to abandon the dark sermon about Herod and modern refugees and to go with Epiphany stars.  On Saturday, I cut out the stars, wrote words on them, and put them in a bag I got from the Mepkin Abbey gift shop.  In church the next day, the experience went well.  For more, see this blog post.

A few weeks ago, a woman stopped me on her way out of church.  She told me that she keeps the star that she drew out of the bag on the dashboard of her car.  The star instructed her to "look up."  She told me that she's glad that the star is there to remind her.

I knew the woman, but we're not church friends--in other words, she didn't have a motivation to find the experience a good one.  I was pleased to hear that the experience was meaningful for her, and meaningful beyond Sunday morning.

I thought about how I had been hesitant to choose that direction for Epiphany.  I was reminded of my own star:

I'm also aware that I was able to say yes because I knew that the service was Jan. 1, a day with sparser attendance--and attendance might also be impacted by everyone's knowledge that our pastor would be on vacation.  I was able to take a risk with a different kind of sermon, a more interactive sermon, because the day was going to be different anyway.

But I'm glad I said yes to that Epiphany service.  I'm going to try to use that as a reminder to say yes more often.