The majority of our pot-banging neighbourhood population voted to end our nightly ritual. No one’s surprised; after all, these past three months have been anything but easy and although the pleasure of greeting friends and neighbours can’t be overlooked, neither can the freedom that comes with the gradual opening of businesses and holiday venues. I look upon the decision as a wise one, one that incorporates the end of one good thing and the beginning of another new, and hopefully, better phase.
As I write this article, it’s Father’s Day and I’ve spent a number of hours looking back to those long-ago years when I delivered our first son and then, four years later, to the birth of our second son. Those were the beginning years of raising two busy boys and watching them become energetic young men. Specific beginnings evolved into their choices of careers, of wives and of lifestyles. All those years have created endings and beginnings for us parents, as well as for them.
Be they personal, local, nation-wide or international, beginnings and endings are part of life. The current pandemic has created massive changes in economic conditions, in freedom of travel, in employment situations. In our personal lives and over those global conditions we have little to no choice. It’s how we view and handle them that makes the difference.
Situations over which we have no control? There are plenty and I’d be untruthful if I said I’ve had no “down days” because I’ve had my share of them. What makes the difference for me, though, is knowing the One who is both the end and the beginning!
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” (Revelation 22:13)
Knowing Him means the end will usher in a new and even richer beginning.
