Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings and Endings

The dictionary defines the word "vacation" as "a period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation." Though I imagine it happens less often than not, it seems the ideal vacation would come to an end just as the life we left behind begins to seem preferable. Yet even if it is with reluctance that we let go of our last vacation day, most of us can imagine why we must. By definition, a vacation is something that must come to an end. To vacate life as we know it on a permanent basis would be called something different entirely.  

Though we know that the days of a vacation are short-lived, we nevertheless enjoy them. Even as they fade away into the calendar, they are remembered (and often nostalgically). That they were few does not hinder their impact. On the contrary, a few days devoted to relaxation are made valuable because of the many that are not.

And we know this to be true of life as well—that it is fleeting, makes it all the more momentous.

As one musician candidly notes, "There are arbitrary lines between bad and good that often don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't want to die, obviously, but really, the wonder of life is amplified by the fact that it ends."(1)

Like withering grass and dwindling summers, fading flowers and vacation days, life cannot escape its end. Like the seasons we live through, generations spring forth and die away. Like the vacations we take, so our days pass away into the calendar. If we refuse to look at any of these endings we live foolishly; if we look only to their ends we miss something about living.  

The psalmist saw the importance of seeing our lives as they are and living in this reality. "Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life" (Psalm 39:4). It is a prayer said with an eternal hope even as it is aware of the fleeting nature of time. "But now, Lord, what do I look for?  My hope is in you" (39:7).

To see our lives as they are is to see that we are, as one theologian observed, "a vision of God and a mountain of dust." It is to embrace a fearful but hopeful thought that gaining one's life might somehow involve losing it, that endings though sometimes painful are often necessary, and that somehow to die is gain.    

When Jesus stood with the disciples staring down the very hour he came to face, he told his friends that his time with them was coming to an end. He told them that his departing would usher in the Great Comforter, that he was leaving to prepare a place for them, and that in his coming and going the world would see that he finished exactly what the Father sent him to do. He reminded them that in the ending of this season was the budding hope of another. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going" (John 14:3-4). Jesus did not just go and so end his days as a human on earth; he went to prepare a place for an extended time together.   

The psalmist writes, "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." Into this great mystery we can live our days, knowing that within the giving of a life to God and in the ending of a life given to God is a great and imperishable beginning.