Rise and Dine! January 6, 2019

Dear Friends

Happy Day of Epiphany! On the way to church this morning, I drove by our local Sonic Burger and saw this wonderful visual aid:

Instead of  "Arise, shine for your light has come" (Isaiah 60:1), the theme for my children's talk, this balloon (which looked to me like a light bulb) declared "Rise and Dine! Open at 6 am". I can't wait to show up for breakfast tomorrow and thank the manager for his or her great, if perhaps unintentional, Epiphany Day message which I, of course, added to mine. Not only should we arise and shine on Epiphany, we should rise and dine every Sunday morning, rise and go dine, go have a special meal we call Eucharist. 

In any case, I told the children that of all the seven "I am" messages that Jesus spoke..."I am the Bread of Life", "I am the Good Shepherd",  "I am the Resurrection", for example... only one

---"I am the light of the world"---is transferred to us: "You are the light of the world". (I found myself when distributing the host this morning saying "You are the light of the world".)

To help us remember one way to be the light of the world, I suggested 5 words: 

                    Listen  Inquire  Give  Help  Thanks  

The first letters of the five words, as you can see, spell LIGHT. When we meet other people, we listen and inquire so we can give help and then give thanks to God for the opportunity. 

And while I'm thinking of thanking, thank you God (and Sonic Burger) for providing this surprise and timely visual aid, while driving to church this morning.

John