Dictionary.com defines an aha moment as “a point in time, event, or experience when one has a sudden insight or realization.”

Scripture is full of aha! moments: Moses heard the burning bush speak. (Aha!) Prophet after prophet was shooed by God into a profession they had not contemplated. “But I don’t want to go to Nineveh!” “But I’m a dresser of sycamores.” God said,” Do it anyhow. (Aha!) In the New Testament, the apostles recognized that when Jesus spoke their name, they had to go with him right then. God got Paul’s attention by knocking him down on the road to Damascus. “Why do you persecute me?” And earlier than the apostles or Paul was the recognition of the wondrous star by the wise men from the East—not Jews—who followed that star on a long exhausting trek to seek a king in tiny Bethlehem and found a newborn baby. (Different kind of king—Aha!)

There are many Epiphany carols, such as “We Three Kings” (though they weren’t kings, of course), “What Child Is This?” “The First Nowell” (with its awkward text emphases), to name just a few.

But look beyond these for music not necessarily associated with the Epiphany, songs that call us to own our aha! moments when we recognize the presence of God in our lives and the actions we are called by God to do. “Christ Be Our Light,” “Did You Know,” “O God, You Search Me,” “Word of God”—these are only a few of Bernadette Farrell’s songs that make us think, and urge us, simply and powerfully, to recognize and follow Christ.