New Beginnings

As I go through the stages of my own life, I've often asked myself what's truly essential. Again and again, I've come to feel that it is to always prepare for new beginnings. Like this Holy Week, I get to reflect on and claim its promise of resurrection to those who believe in the risen Lord. As best as I can, for the moment when He calls me, I stand ready to receive His much better new beginnings.

We'd do well to ask ourselves the same question. And it does not matter how old you are. Youth is one of our happiest or most enjoyable years of life. Still, they also have an ending and our joys will only truly continue when we begin to concern ourselves with preparing for new beginnings. The same goes for old age. It can be marked by depression, anxiety, or any type of emotional and mental disorder if we don't realize the importance of embracing new beginnings.

As the ancient Hebrew author of Ecclesiastes so beautifully puts it, there is ...

A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to plant and a time to uproot,
A time to kill and a time to heal,
A time to tear down and a time to build,
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to search and a time to give up,
A time to keep and a time to throw away,
A time to tear and a time to mend,
A time to be silent and a time to speak,
A time to love and a time to hate,
A time for war and a time for peace.

Indeed, my life as well as yours would be so small if it consists only of what we feel, what we think, what we touch and see today. New beginnings are always waiting. If we live before the new beginnings of eternity, we will see that it is much more real than anything else in this earthly, visible world.

The Lord Jesus of this Holy Week speaks of our ultimate new beginnings if we give our lives to Him:

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die" (John 11:25-26).