Let Your Colors Burst

It is winter and I’ve been thinking about light, or more so, the lack of it. I celebrate the season of Epiphany. It’s the season that begins on Christmas day and ends on Ash Wednesday. Celebrating this season means, among other things, I feel no guilt about leaving my Christmas tree up until after the New Year.  One of my favorite authors, Lauren Winner, wrote a little more eloquently about this season:

Lima, Peru ~ August 2009

“Epiphany is a season of Light. After we have packed away the Christmas lights with which we strung our trees, we find the church calendar giving us still more time and space to consider Jesus, the Light of the World, and to consider the way that we might get our own lights out from under all those bushels, and manifest Jesus to the world.” Copyright © 2006 Lauren F. Winner. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. This article was published on Boundless.org on January 6, 2012.



I was walking out of Powell’s Books one day last year and checked out the quotable cards. I always gaze longingly at the twirling rack that displays these cards when I visit. For two reasons, one: I really love words and typeface, and two because I love twirling, both my person and things.  I stopped the rack abruptly in mid-twirl when I read, “You are the light of the world.-Matthew-“. My first thought was, “Well that’s wrong.  I’m not the light of the world, Jesus is. He said so in the book of Matthew.”

When I got home I looked up this verse. I was correct, Matthew didn’t say it, Jesus did and Matthew quotes Jesus. And after proving my correctness and feeling all kinds of validation, I was blindsided with the truth of that quote. Jesus says to his followers that they are the light of the world. Jesus, THE great light for all people says that I, Alyssa, am the light of the world. A.Maze.Ing.

I am here to be light - bringing out the God-colors of the world. I am here to be light. I am here to be light. I need to keep saying this to myself as I struggle through this dark winter. I am here to be light.
I am here.

"You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world." ~ Jesus
Matthew 5:14 The Message