Happy Epiphany! When was the last time you had an epiphany? I would love to hear about it. The Native Americans have a device called a Dream Catcher. But I would like to introduce Epiphany Catcher—not a device but a skill.

Epiphanies can be big or small, subtle or vivid, but each epiphany raises our consciousness to a higher level, enriching our lives with meaning, joy, and hope.

I had an epiphany recently. Sophie and I went for the First Day Hike on Mount Taurus in Cold Spring, New York, on New Year’s Day. This part used to be the estate of the Cornish family, covering about 650 acres of breathtakingly beautiful land on Hudson Highlands.

We stopped by the remains of the impressive stone and brick Cornish mansion overlooking the Hudson River. Later, we arrived at a waterfall, and our guide told us that it was the end of the guided hike. We were free to continue hiking or return with him to the parking lot with the guide.

Sophie and I chose to hike further since we didn’t feel tired yet, and the weather was not bad. It was cloudy, but it didn’t rain until we returned to the car later. On our way, we saw a vast old broken cistern.

Having just seen a waterfall, I remember the Lord’s Word through Jeremiah,

“My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer 2:13).

We just saw a waterfall and now a cistern, and it was as if this verse had come to life. The natural waterfall still flows like living water, but this manmade cistern is broken. The two images and this verse stayed in my head for the whole week. It was an epiphany for me!

Throughout history, people have kept committing these two evils—forsaking the Lord, the fountain of living water, and digging out cisterns for themselves that cannot hold water. We forsake the eternal for the temporal. It reminds me to embrace the eternal over temporal.

If you are wondering what epiphany means, it’s translated from the Greek “ἐπιφαίνω (epiphaínō),” which is usually translated as “appearance” or “manifestation.” The root word “φαίνω (phaínō)” means “to shine” or “to come to light.” In that case, it also means “enlightenment.”

So, epiphany is something you see that enlightens you and takes you to a higher level of consciousness. Simply put, your epiphany is your “aha” moment due to what you see.

Epiphany of the Lord is a Christian festival after the twelve days of Christmas. I am glad that our faith fathers designated a day and a season of Epiphany to remind us of the importance of epiphany. There are four to nine weeks after Epiphany before Lent.

We should use this season to cultivate the skill to catch epiphanies. An epiphany can be a life-changing experience. If you have frequent epiphanies, life can become very exciting. Life is not worth living without epiphanies.

Epiphany is also known as the Three Kings Day because it commemorates the visit of the three wise men or magi to baby Jesus. Two thousand years ago, a group of wise men from the Far East paid attention to the signs of the divine and noticed that a significant King was born.

It was so significant that they journeyed seven thousand miles to pay homage to this child. So, today, let us learn to capture epiphanies by learning from the story of these wise men so we can also enjoy life with hope, excitement, and wonder. Let’s begin!

Start Your New Year Jesus’ Way Luke 2:41–52 What I like about New Year is that it allows me to start over again. It’s like a fresh new diary book to write another 365 pages of my dream journey. Whether you regard 2024 as a successful year for you or not, the new year gives you another starting point to renew your dream. Another thing I like about the New Year is that it marks a new milestone in an incredible miracle in history. Our calendar is a testimony to Jesus Christ. We often neglect the significance of the calendar we see every day. 2025 means it has been two thousand and twenty-five years since the birth of Jesus Christ, more or less. It’s a miracle because it was about a child born to a young peasant woman in an obscure town behind an obscure inn in a probably smelly manger. After his birth, his king tried to murder him, so his family had to escape to Egypt. He was a refugee kid. Even the town he grew up in later was so obscure that people in those days believed nothing good could come out of Nazareth. With all the obstacles and obscurity, this child broke human history into two parts: BC and AD—BCE and CE to make it politically correct. No matter how you call it, 2025 still points back to the birth of Christ. Each time you put down your signature, you refer to Jesus Christ by putting the date next to it. Even the atheist communists must make reference to him. Christmas is not just a joyful winter solstice celebration or a year-end commercial festival. We must not see it any less than the immense impact of an obscure child that divided our history into two parts. Each time I look at the calendar, I see the evidence of a miracle that only God could have done. As we prepare for the New Year and take another shot at life to make it more fruitful, I believe we can learn significantly from this divine child who has made the maximum impact in the world. This Sunday’s scripture lesson gives us a clue on how Jesus grew in three aspects of life: Wisdom, Maturity, and Charisma, which I call the three pillars of personal growth for maximum impact. According to Luke, that’s how the divine child grew up, and we can use these three pillars as our reference when making New Year's resolutions. Let’s check it out.

I read Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection a few years ago. It was his last novel, published when he was 71. I have discovered that reading someone’s final works gives you the best of their lifetime wisdom, especially from a great thought leader like Tolstoy.

Most of you know Tolstoy for his famous book War and Peace. But did you know he had a spiritual awakening when he was around 50 years old? If you read his books written after that point, they will be more meaty, weighty, and highly spiritual.

Why should we take Tolstoy seriously? Here’s why. He is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times and the Nobel Peace Prize three times. That’s incredible! However, he did not get the award despite being nominated so many times, probably because he was critical of the governments and powerful religious institutions of his time.

Tolstoy was also known as a Christian Anarchist, submitting to no human ruler, including religious authority. Christian Anarchists believe Christ alone is their king and no one else. Are you one of them? Are you supposed to be one? Abraham was one. We will talk more about that later.

Tolstoy’s other book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was banned in Russia but published in Germany. In that book, Tolstoy presented the idea of “nonviolent resistance,” which fueled the movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

By now, I am sure you are convinced that he should not be ignored.

The book Resurrection depicts the corruptive nature of society. If you are rich and powerful, you can be corrupted by your power, procession, and prestige; if you are poor, you might be forced to choose the wrong means to survive. So, whether rich or poor, the human civilization will corrupt you.

That’s why the wise King Solomon asked God not to make him too rich or too poor. He knew that if he were too rich, he could forget God; if he were too poor, he might dishonor God by committing crimes. That doesn’t preclude those in between because rich or poor is relative.

We live in a fallen world—a sea of suffering. What’s worse than suffering is its corruptive nature. It brings out the worst of you.

Tolstoy’s Resurrection takes us on a journey to see the injustice of the legal system, the prejudice of society, the hypocrisy of religious institutions, and, most importantly, the unintentionality of it, making it hard to change. He helps us see that many evils are done unintentionally or even with good intentions.

We often think those who fight for justice are righteous, but they often become a new force of injustice. Communism is an example. It starts out with good intentions but ends up worse than the evil they fight against. We all want to make this world better, but no one knows how to correct the wrongs the right way, except through a personal resurrection. If you want to change the world, change yourself. That change must be thorough; that is resurrection—the old must be gone, and the new must begin.

That community of new lives is called the kingdom of God, and I call it Civilization Next—the civilization of the resurrected people. The Kingdom of God is not just on the other side of death. You can experience the new life right now and right here because you belong to Civilization Next if you have accepted Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, you are in the world but not of the world. You live in the future now.

Based on the scripture lesson on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we will look at two women in history who brought the Civilization Next to Earth—the 88-year-old Elizabeth and the 14-year-old Mary. Let’s begin!

In England in 1535, King Henry VIII condemned Thomas More to death for treason, mainly for refusing to say that the king was the head of the Church of England. More was imprisoned, waiting for his capital punishment.

More’s friend came to persuade him to say what the king wanted him to say for survival. More refused because it was against his beliefs. His friends pleaded him, “You don’t have to believe it; you just have to say it.” Thomas More refused to compromise his integrity and paid the price with his head.

What would you do if you were in such situations? Would you compromise your integrity to save your life? Or would you betray your conscience for survival?

Do you know Americans lie on average 11 times a week? That’s according to APA (American Psychology Association). No data shows how many lies people from other countries tell, but I believe Americans are more honest comparatively.

Many immigrants say Americans are pretty naïve. They are so easily deceived. American tourists are the easiest targets for scammers worldwide because we trust people readily. That may be because Christian values govern our way of living. “In God, We Trust” is the slogan on our currencies.

Still, research shows Americans are not 100% honest. Lying seems like part of life, and we often make excuses to justify lying. The Burmese say,

“Without lies, words are not smooth.” (mutha maba, linga machaw). ~Burmese Proverbs

It means that without lies, it’s hard to make your speech interesting, poetic, or persuasive. It also means you need a little lie to get your message across. It seems to glorify lying as an art. No wonder we call scammers “con artists.”

In English, we also have the term “white lies.” It means a type of lie that does not harm anyone. Is it true that a white lie does not hurt anybody?

After some research, I’ve discovered that every fib harms the fibber. Every lie we tell lies to ourselves. According to Akira Kurosawa, the maker of Rashomon,

“It’s human to lie. Most of the time, we can’t even be honest with ourselves.” ~Akira Kurosawa

A white lie may not harm others, but it does compromise the liar’s well-being. Studies have shown that a person’s integrity can affect their immunity. After the pandemic, we have learned the value of strong immunity—physically, psychologically, or spiritually.

According to biologists, the moment someone lies, their brain releases stress hormones, such as cortisol, weakening their immune system. We often say, “Lier, lier, pants on fire!” Their pants might not be on fire, but their immunity is on fire.

That’s how lie detectors work. The machine can sense the subtle signs of stress on our nerves when lying. Some people can cheat the lie detector, but they cannot cheat their health. So, honesty is truly the best policy not only for our character but also for our well-being.

It proves that we are not created to lie. We are created in God’s image. When we lie, our body resists it, feels uncomfortable with it, and punishes us for it by degrading our health.

There are two kinds of stress—overt and covert. Overt stress is obvious; you know it when you have it. But covert stress is more insidious. We might not feel it, but it silently kills us from the inside. It will eventually show up on our lab reports during a checkup. Sometimes, it could be too late to reverse it.

Lying is just one of many things that compromise our immunity. Anger, grudges, guilt, discord, manipulation, and other things the Bible calls sin can stress our systems and compromise our integrity and immunity.

It seems we don’t even need God to punish us for our sins; our body is punishing us already. If it is human to lie, how do we redeem ourselves? However, Jesus said that what’s not possible with humans is possible with God. He said,

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (Jn 3:17).

The truth is that Jesus did not come to punish us but to save us from our plight. The immunity boost is just a fringe benefit once we take care of our integrity by confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness. Then, our bodies stop rebelling.

We are on the Second Sunday of Advent. Advent means coming. So today, let us explore how to prepare the way for Christ’s coming into our lives by optimizing our integrity and boosting our immunity based on this week’s scripture lesson. Let’s begin!

During my college years, I gathered with some friends every Saturday morning at a tea house to enjoy our morning tea and talk. One day, a friend showed up with bandages over his head, arms, and legs. He had a nearly fatal motorcycle accident. He said he wished he had died that very moment because he was sure he would have gone straight to heaven since he had been well-behaved in those days.

He had been attending church regularly, volunteering, and giving to charity. He was sure God would welcome him, saying, “Well done, my son. Welcome to heaven!” My friend was disappointed that he did not die because now he had to keep behaving as if good behavior was challenging for him.

I wasn’t sure if he was joking because we all know that our admission to heaven depends not on our deeds but God’s grace. Thank God! However, my friend’s concern is not baseless because Jesus repeatedly says he wants to see us awake and working when he returns. The Lord said,

“Blessed is that servant whom his master will find at work when he arrives.” (Mt 24:46).

If salvation does not depend on our work but on God’s grace alone, why would he expect to see us working? Shouldn’t we all goof to heaven? Does it mean grace is not free? Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that grace is free but not cheap. He said,

“The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How do we understand grace is free but not cheap? Grace requires gratitude to complete, but how do you thank God, who doesn’t need anything from us? I’ve learned that you thank God by gracing forward.

I have discovered that Grace is like electricity with inflow and outflow to complete a circuit. A lightbulb can not lit up by only the inflow of the electric current. It needs two wires—an inflow and an outflow to complete the energy circuit. We are just like lightbulbs. Grace makes us shine when we grace it forward. Jesus said,

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” (Mat 5:8).

That means the outflow makes the inflow possible. Jesus used several parables to teach this profound mystery, such as The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. In that parable, a man owed the king a massive amount of money, equivalent to more than a billion dollars of today’s money, which he could not repay in his lifetime, but the king forgave him out of mercy because he bagged him for more time.

However, on his way home, he met a man who owed him a small amount of money. He sent him to prison for not paying back immediately. The king heard about his mercilessness and revoked his grace.

This story reveals that grace is like electricity; the input doesn’t work without an output. If you receive grace and don’t grace it forward, the grace you receive returns to where it came from. Grace is free but not cheap because it requires you to pay it forward to complete the circuit.

It does not mean grace has strings attached, but it’s just how it flows. On the other hand, Jesus said that the servant who is found goofing would be severely punished.

“He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 24:51).

It sounds scary. I think that’s why my friend was afraid of dying when goofing. He doesn’t want to join the hypocrites. None of us do. The word “hypocrites” comes from the Greek word with a similar pronunciation: ῠ̔ποκρῐτής (hupokritḗs), meaning “stage actor” or “pretender.”

Hypocrites are like weeds that pretend to be like wheat. They look identical until harvest time. When harvest time comes, they stand tall and light because they don’t carry the weight of the grains. They are just pretenders or hypocrites. They don’t grace it forward. They cheapen grace. Jesus said,

“At harvest time, I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Mt 13:30).

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent means coming. It’s a season to think about the coming of Christ, particularly the second coming, which will be the harvest time. He will separate the weeds from the wheat, the hypocrites from the real Christians who grace it forward to complete the circuit of power.

When you grace it forward, your life becomes fruitful. So, today, we will explore how to maintain a fruitful state based on this week’s scripture lesson so that we will not appear as weeds or hypocrites when the Lord comes. Let’s begin!

Napoleon famously said, “The word impossible is not in my dictionary.” His can-do spirit helped him make incredible achievements in history. In my dictionary, I want to delete the word “unacceptable” because I’ve discovered that acceptance is love in action, and it’s essential to developing our spiritual intelligence or Spiritual Quotient (SQ).

To be successful or live a good life, we need IQ, EQ, and SQ. Your SQ (Spiritual Quotient) is measured by your ability to love and accept people.

First, we must learn the difference between approval and acceptance. For example, my children may do things I disapprove of, but I must accept them because I love them. Approval is based on law, but acceptance is based on love. Approval is based on the head, but acceptance is based on the heart. That sounds simple enough but not easy to practice.

Jesus wants us to love even our enemies. Many people confuse loving our enemies with approving their actions. No, Jesus wants us to “accept” our enemies without “approving” their behaviors. Otherwise, we could end up demonizing people and justifying violence.

We all have encountered people doing things that we disapprove of. Sometimes, it’s just a minor issue, so we can easily forgive and forget about it, but there are times when people may go above and beyond our tolerance threshold, and we say, “It’s unacceptable.”

In such cases, we muddle the line between approval and acceptance because our strong emotion overrides our ability to see the person apart from their behavior. Jesus wants us to love the person despite their behavior. I know it’s a tall order.

Some people have a lower tolerance threshold than others. They are quick to stick a Scarlet Letter on someone they disapprove of.

Talking about the Scarlet Letter, I am sure most of you have read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American Classic, “The Scarlet Letter,” or have watched one of the movie adaptations. The story reveals that everyone wears a Scarlet Letter—outwardly or inwardly, legally or secretly—even the holiest man in town has a secret Scarlet Letter beneath his clothes.

The story reveals human nature, keeps us humble, and warns us against hypocrisy. Understanding this human nature would allow us to separate approval from acceptance.

To effectively resolve human conflicts, we must first accept one another. But most people got it backward. They don’t accept others until they approve of their behaviors. Acceptance must be unconditional because that’s what “agape love” is about, the kind of love Jesus taught.

Jesus has shown us the ultimate acceptance on the cross by forgiving and seeing humans as redeemable. He expects us to love one another the way he loves us. That’s a huge challenge, but when you can widen the gap between approval and acceptance, you are on the way to spiritual maturity, as Jesus expected.

Based on this week’s scripture lesson, we will explore Jesus’ teaching on what’s lawful and loveful and how to read the Scarlet Letter A differently. Along the way, we will discover how to raise our SQ—Spiritual Quotient—to live a joyful, meaningful, and fruitful life. Let’s begin!