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Morning Meditation for Epiphany
January 13, 2026
Reading: John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
Before graduate school, this piece of text read like a riddle to me. Compared to the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke it is confusing to identify the story of Christ’s coming in the form of the word and the light, and even more confusing to identify what that coming means for us. But as the years go by and the significance of this story truly inculcates every facet of my life, this text reads as poetry. The kind of poetry that so poignantly captures and conveys a message no ordinary words could communicate. Christ was, and is, before and after all things, the eternal word made flesh. Christ is the light that cannot be overcome by any amount of human darkness.
The power of God’s coming is represented through language, the word, just as the world is brought into being through God’s word in Genesis. And at the end of this Gospel once again the magnitude of forgiveness and love is represented through language as Christ greets his disciples in peace. God’s is a love and a light that cannot be extinguished or dominated, despite our very human effort to control and manipulate God; our very human instinct to reject love as we do in the crucifixion. This Gospel asks of us, that like John the Baptist, we all be witness to the light of Christ.
In RYG this month we are talking about anxiety, and the power of faith to help us manage that which brings us fear or suffering. The primary question when considering anxiety and its relationship with our faith can be: what do you worship? If you worship prestige, achievement, material wealth, social power, or things of any kind, this can lead to a natural fear that you may not acquire them, or if you have acquired them, that you may lose them. The story of Jesus, and the relationship that he offers us with God as our adopted father, not of the flesh, but of the spirit, replaces or supersedes any manmade relationship with people or things. It has the power to liberate us from the very human anxieties that shackle us to this world and the things of it. Just as Moses liberated the Israelites from a literal bondage in Egypt and gave them the law, Jesus liberates us from the bondage of our own making-our own anxieties-and gives us love through grace. The challenge then is for us to accept that freedom, that gift, and to share the peace that it offers us with everyone we encounter.
Prayer
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love
our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth:
deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in
your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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