During Epiphany and through to the Transfiguration, we are entering into a series based around ‘living.’ That is living, truly living, as journey people in the way God wants for us.

It is a time to reflect on our own homes and all the things we live “in”: apartments, condos, houses small and large, the solid, stable, immovable constructs around us.

It is time to reflect on what we live ‘with’: furniture and living equipment and gadgets. Some are necessary for survival, like cooking devices and heating. Some are gadgets and accessories that are considered not only desirable, but increasingly necessary in the modern world, making living easier on one hand, but also weighing us down with additional worries on the other.

It is time to reflect on what we live ‘for’: perhaps our families and/or our aspirations. Some of which will give us joy and some of which will disappoint. Some of which will challenge us to new heights and some of which will take us down dead ends.

The season also gives us a chance to think about what we live ‘by’: perhaps long held traditions that positively ground our existence or traditions that tie us down to a way that we should have given up long ago. They may be principles that can guide us into a better world or take us further from being and living the way that God intended for us.

God intends not for us to be settled people fortifying our lives with brick walls and impenetrable doors but to be journeying people, nomads in a world that is going somewhere good, despite what the news tells you.