Pennies Project ll: The Surprise of Epiphanies

Apr 23, 2010
Image by Stephannie Moran

Image by Stephannie Moran

I hope you enjoy reading the three brief articles below as they help to give some extra clarity and meaning regarding our weekly time of sharing the pennies that come our way. If you are curious, feel free to join us as we take some time each Sunday to share with each other the surprising small ways in which God has shown us that he loves us and is with us, or add your own account of your pennies, your experiences of bumping into God’s presence in the ordinariness of your life routine on our blog.

” There are no ordinary things. A row of cabbages, a farmyard cat, a wrinkled motherly face, a tiled roof, a single sentence in a book—each can be seen as a tiny revelation of God as Creator. Just as fragments of sunlight break through a dark wood, so parts of creation seen for what they are act as ‘patches of Godlight’ in the world”. (C.S. Lewis,  Letters to Malcolm)

“I feel an urgency at this stage in my life to name the human expressions and vivid manifestations of our life in the Spirit. I believe that nothing human is foreign to the Spirit, that the Spirit embraces all. Our mundane experiences contain all the stuff of holiness and of human growth in grace. Our world is rife with messages and signatures of the Spirit. Our encounters with one another are potential sites of the awakening and energizing that characterizes the Spirit. But so much goes unnoticed. We fail so often to recognize the light that shines the tiny chinks and dusty panes of our daily lives. We are too busy to name the event that is blessed in its ordinariness, holy in its uniqueness, and grace-filled in its underlying challenge. ” (Joan Puls, Every Bush is Burning)

“In this age of frenetic activity and general cacophony we need to fight to find time alone, to sweep out the dust that clogs simple meditation, to clear the cobwebs that shroud from ear and eye and nerve endings, to notice the spring breeze through your hair, a friend’s raucous laugh, a nighttime walk through a neighborhood eerily bathed in sterile streetlight. Epiphany, often enjoyable at face value, does not have to be an end in itself. It can be a training ground for the hunt, the search for what is fleeting, intuitive and, though irrational, still meaningful—that which gives peace with a pulse, something that abides throughout the other ninety-eight percent of life that is depressingly static, obvious, rational.

God created a world brimming with countless ingredients, far more subtle, than can fit the recipe for epiphany. These elements—the world’s beagle puppies and girls with pitchers on their heads and sunny afternoons along the reservoir cliffs—amount to more than mere take-time-to-smell-the-roses opportunities. These are classroom aides, from which one can learn to see, learn to hear the voice that brings peace amid the clatter.” (Max Heine,  Pg 29-30 Spots of Time by  Mars Hill Review Summer 1998)

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