Dear Friends,

This Sunday, the last in Epiphany, we once again hear the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration—a moment that always brings us to the mountaintop. There, the disciples glimpse Jesus in all his radiant glory—glowing white, standing alongside Elijah and Moses. For a fleeting moment, they see him as they never had before. And just as suddenly, the vision fades. The light recedes. And Jesus is simply Jesus again, leading them back down the mountain.

One thing I’ve learned over my years of ministry—and just plain living—is that learning to see in new ways isn’t easy. Old habits of selective vision—what we choose to focus on, what we ignore—shape our reality. Even when we long for transformation, we tend to hold onto familiar ways of seeing the world.

A few days ago, I was out walking when I noticed a bare tree silhouetted against the winter sky. Its branches were brittle and dry, stripped of life. But for the first time, I saw not death, but promise. In just a few weeks, buds would form. New life would push through. The tree itself hadn’t changed, but my way of seeing it had.

In her essay, “Seeing,”* Annie Dillard tells of people born blind who, after receiving sight-restoring surgery, had to learn how to see. At first, they struggled to interpret shapes, colors, and distances. Their minds tried to fit the new world into the old categories they understood. It took time for them to trust what was in front of them.

Maybe Transfiguration is less about dazzling displays of glory and more about the slow work of learning to see. To recognize light where we once saw only darkness. To perceive life where we assumed there was only loss.

The disciples’ vision on the mountain didn’t last, but it changed them. It prepared them to see the holy in places they never expected—in brokenness, in suffering, in an empty tomb. Maybe it can do the same for us.

So, as we prepare to step from the bright season of Epiphany into the shadowed journey of Lent, may we ask: What are we being invited to see differently? Where is the light breaking through? And how might we carry that vision with us—not just on the mountaintop, but in the valleys, too?

In Christ,

Amelie+

* Annie Dillard, "Seeing." in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Collins, 1974), 14-34.