Thoughts of the Day this month are part of a special series in Epiphanytide, the time between Epiphany Sunday and Lent, during which we hear gospel stories of the growing faith of the disciples and of the revelation that Jesus is truly the son of God.
To mark this time, members of our congregation share stories of their own faith journeys and Epiphany moments that have inspired them and drawn them deeper into faith.
Thought and Prayer of the Day
by James Burrow
I didn’t realize I needed God until a gloomy November afternoon, when I was 22, in 2008. Up until that point, He had been there in the background – at Sunday school as a kid, at bible camp, and while I studied religion in high school – but I never needed Him until that moment. Plenty of people would argue that needing God isn’t a good reason for believing in Him. Maybe they’re right. I don’t really care. There are plenty of other good reasons for believing in God, whether you think you need Him or not.
That afternoon, I was sitting at my parents table at our house just outside Edinburgh. Bored of my university dissertation, I stared out of the window, it was almost dark and only 3pm. The fall colour had gone, leaving the trees skeletal against a backdrop of heavy cloud scudding by. My childhood best friend, David Argyle, had died of cancer 4 months earlier. We were born in the same Inverness hospital 10 days apart – the 4th and the 14th of April 1986. And now he was gone.
The death hadn’t affected me the way I thought it would. I thought there would be more mourning, more crying, feeling something at least. I was simultaneously ashamed and proud of this reaction. Ashamed at my coldness; proud of my toughness. But that afternoon my supposed toughness evaporated in an instant: unless there was a God, David really was gone forever. We wouldn’t be reunited in an afterlife; he wasn’t free of pain and in a better place; he was dust and nothing more. And that dust is what I would be one day, and my Mum, my Dad, and everyone who I’d ever loved. If there’s no God, the things I held (and hold) dear were just mirages. Love – a chemical reaction in the brain. Beauty, justice – meaningless human inventions.
So that was my epiphany. A realisation that I desperately needed God to make sense of everything in life. It was filled with tears of grief and existential horror. It was not a happy epiphany, because in that moment, I really didn’t think I believed in the God I needed so badly. And that left me with nothing.
It took me a while to climb out of the depression that followed, and to believe that something like God existed. It took me even longer to believe that Christianity might really be true. And longer still to make it through the doors of a church and find a home. It’s a journey that’s too long to describe here, and one that I’m still on in many ways, though now guided more by hope than fear. A hope in God’s mercy, forgiveness and power to heal our brokenness; and a comfort in the knowledge that He loved us enough to descend into the mess of this world to save us. It’s something I know I won’t fully understand in this life, but I do believe it. I’m happy to tell more to anyone who’s interested.
Prayer
Christ, you have gone before me
to prepare a place for me
that where you are
there I might be also.
Teach me to wait with patience,
to watch with alertness,
to trust that you are with me
in the unknown future
and to know your presence.
Prayer by Jane Williams, professor St. Mellitus College
