Issue 23: “Flashes of Light”
"Poetry is a nightingale that sits in the darkness and sings"
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often wondrous and also difficult. Holding beauty, naming pain, and contending for hope is what M25i does well. Walter Brueggeman writes, "A poem utters the unutterable and thinks the unthinkable." In places of brokenness, where much feels unutterable and unimaginable, we encounter Jesus. Continue with us in reflection and prayer through this series, "For the Soul," as poetry might offer Spirit-soaked imagination.
What might an Epiphany star look like today? It's you.
You are dispelling the darkness. You who are serving, working, for pay or volunteering, with your church or because you signed up with a non-profit—all of you who come near those who are struggling and can't keep up, all of you who enter the messy irreconcilable suffering of this world in our neighborhoods, cities, and communities. You are flashes of light.
Well done, Anglicans who have tasted and known God's joy and presence and walk straight into places of pain, because you are revealing His hidden glory. You are living revelations of glory. Well done.
Flashes of Light
by Henri J.M. Nouwen
People who have come to know the joy of God
claim that the light that shines in the darkness
can be trusted
more than the darkness itself-
that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.
They point each other to flashes of light,
reminding one another that they reveal the hidden,
but real, presence of God.
They discover that there are people who heal other’s wounds,
forgive their offenses, share their possessions,
foster the spirit of community,
celebrate the gifts they have received,
and live in constant anticipation
of the full manifestation
of God’s glory.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6
At M25i we hope to shape an ACNA that is known for its vision of those who are most vulnerable in our society.
We help parishes and dioceses strategize, launch new works of justice and mercy, revamp works that have gotten stuck, and offer resources to their churches that can mature what it means to be Anglicans who love Christ in the poor, the imprisoned, the stranger, and the hungry.
