As I watch the flower petals being torn from their flowers by an aggressive wind, I am amazed at the enormous amount of multicolored petals whirling through the air. As I ponder the sweep of my own years, I can see a similar wide array of beginnings and endings, floating across my mind’s eye. They are as varied and as and colorful, in their own way, as the petals of a flower.
Beginnings include relationships, jobs, new ideas, skills, projects, trips, artistic creations and many ordinary things such as reading a book or cooking a meal. I sometimes think of beginnings as specific dates or times, but that oversimplifies considering them. In writing a book, for instance, perhaps it begins when the first word is written down. Or maybe it starts when the idea is born. Or with the seeds and hints that grow into that idea. Or might it begin in the mind of God when He Himself envisions creating its author! The choice to write is still the author’s, but if that author is connected to God… it makes you wonder.
It becomes a stirring realization that our beginnings might be the fruit of the magnificent creativity of the Creator of all things. As our eyes and mind are open, we catch a glimpse of the breadth of God’s creative activity as it unfolds across centuries, most of which we have only an inkling about.
Endings are just as slippery to pinpoint. Is a book complete when the last word is written? Or when another person has read its words and been impacted by it? Or when it has passed out of print? Or when anyone who has been influenced by it has gone from this life? All presumed endings can cause us to feel the open-endedness of things we see as endings. A relationship lives on in the heart of all people, good or bad. Jobs change us and continue in our thinking and behavior. Any work of art that touches our soul deeply remains active and alive in our memory. All occurrences of importance endure through their influence. There is fluidity and wholeness to our lives in spite of the convenience of marking our lives into beginnings and endings, in pieces or segments, into logical shapes and sizes we can manage.
Our vision of beginnings and endings is narrow and incomplete without acknowledging and honoring the only One who has no beginning or ending—who existed always before and always after—who operates outside of and beyond our conception of time—who is the Creator of all things—the One God who came to earth in the flesh as Jesus Christ and entered our time for a little while so He could live among us and die for us and provide for us our own eternal life.
Sitting surrounded by the beauty God created, such as the swirl of hundreds or even thousands of colorful flower petals, may we pause and recognize the God who made it all as part of the demonstration of His own vastness and complexity!