The End. And the Beginning.

"Our lives are marked by seasons"

The End. That phrase is hard and unyielding in its finality. But we must all face the end at some point in our life. I have faced a few endings in my life. I experienced one of those endings when it frosted last week.

Every Tuesday for the past month, I have walked from my newspaper building to the court house about two blocks away. The stone courthouse sits majestic and secluded among aged oak trees. The sidewalk leading up to the courthouse was lined with a vibrant mixture of red, orange, and yellow flowers. Every time I walked that sidewalk, the perfume of the flowers overwhelmed me, and I thanked God for his beautiful creation. But the frost struck a deadly blow last week, and when I walked to the courthouse, I found the flowers hanging their brown heads. Even though I mourned the flowers, I knew that it was appropriate they die in their season.

Our lives are marked by seasons. We call the transition of one season into another an end. We are such finite beings that we cannot see the larger picture. Stuck in time, we cannot see outside of the limitations of the calendar. The turning of the seasons shocks us even though nature teaches us this changing principle. 

We mourn the rotation of a season and call it an end. Nothing will ever be the same. We wanted spring, and God gave us fall. We wanted marriage, yet we’re single. We wanted to go to college, but we don’t have the money. We wanted a child, yet we had to adopt. We wanted to graduate, yet we failed another class. And the largest pain of all—we wanted life, but we were given death. Death makes a final end.

But this perspective should not be the viewpoint of the saved. Our hope is in a Christ who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “end”.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, lived in perfect harmony with the seasons that God gave him. He lived thirty years as a carpenter, doing hard manual labor. When it was time to gather his disciples and teach the world, he spent three years without a home to call his own. After his ministry to the Jews, he was arrested by the Pharisees and killed. In all of the seasons of his life, he never uttered one false charge against God. He accepted the rotating seasons because he trusted that his Father had a purpose. He only wanted the will of his Father to be accomplished through him. And in the end, Christ killed death with his perfect blood, showed that life is only a season, and promised a new season of eternal life.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was buried for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5 

God is not trapped inside the rotating wheel of seasons. He knows that nothing ever ends. When he stops something, he brings life out of it. When we cannot find meaning in our disappointments, he shows us the beauty of our present season. When we are single, He draws us closer to Him and shows us his complete care. When we cannot go to college, He provides wisdom with the trials of life. When we stay more years at college than expected, He causes us to cherish the triumph of graduation even more. When we cannot have a child, He gives us the care of the children of the world. When death kills the body of His child, He receives the soul set free.

The End. But you know it’s not the end, it is only the beginning.