As I scroll through my camera roll looking for images of endings, a sense of melancholy overwhelms me. There are so many endings – moving, graduations, seeing loved ones for final goodbyes. The harder ones are the recent unexpected endings: sports seasons cut unexpectedly short, church buildings full for the last time before quarantine, early ending to a school year.

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.

A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
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.”

We can take heart in knowing that every ending can also mark the beginning of something new. The picture with this message is from the Ulster Project Tearfest. In Ulster Project, American teens host Northern Irish teens for a month full of activity. The teens form deep, lifelong friendships and learn to love one another like family, which makes the inevitable saying “goodbye” a tear-filled event for everyone. While we are sad about saying goodbye to things and people we love, we can take heart in knowing something new will come…and we can be grateful for having had the opportunity to love so deeply.

As resurrection people, we know that the worst things are never the final things. And as in resurrection, we know that, although goodbyes can be hard, we have a promise of new and beautiful things to come.

As we close our Lenten photo challenge devotional series, I bring you a Seneca quote made famous in the 1990’s song “Closing Time”:

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.