Does God appear when you want Him to or, to put it another way, how do you authentically celebrate the Epiphany?

In our local churches we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany today (6th January). This festival celebrates the appearance of God, or his "shining forth," or his glory. In the western church the event usually associated is the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus bringing gifts.

On this Sunday so soon after Christmas it often seems to be a challenge for those constructing worship and choosing hymns to know whether to retain the feel of Christmas or to try to do something different. Most of the hymns seemed to conjure up an image of trudging slowly through snow, and the sermon sought to encourage us to set New Year's Resolutions to do with being more environmentally responsible (too late, I'd done mine, but I do hope that they are responsible). So the set of compromises used this time round didn't seem to lift me to a sense of the presence of God's glory... until we got to the middle of the service.

At the customary handshake called "The Peace" everybody seemed to come alive and it struck me that (as well as everything else it means) the image of the baby Jesus speaks of the presence of the glory of God in each one of us - people - how special we are!