It’s the “End”

Endings are a mixed lot when it comes to the emotions that are attached to them.   The end of a work day, the end of the week, the end of a season, the end of a career, the end of a course of study, the end of a war, the end of a life, the end of a project … the end of a year.  Sometimes the emotions are ones of joy and celebration.  Sometimes they are ones of sadness and despair.  Sometimes they are bittersweet but almost always they are very strong emotions for many of those who are closest to the situation.

Reading the definition of the word, “end” impresses one with an overriding sense of finality.  There simply is nothing on the other side of the end of it.  As a life-long resident of a universe that has no such thing as an end and myself having an eternal soul, the idea of “nothing on the other side” just doesn’t sit right.  It’s not comfortable.

We are approaching the time of year when, inevitably, creeping into our consciousness comes the awareness that the calendar year is about to end.  We have a propensity for pausing at this time of year to evaluate our lives and some of us even determine to make some adjustments in our lives based upon those evaluations.  I’ve come to  view  the “end of the year” as an overly-hyped, highly commercialized device that is relatively impotent as far as its ability to prompt any significant betterment of the condition of man and the way we interact with one another … or the way we live before God.

It occurs to me that we, our family and friends … and indeed the whole world, would be served better if we were to view each and every day as the “end” of a year for in fact, each day is just that!  Today is the end of a year that began 365 days ago.  Tomorrow will be the end of a year that began 364 days ago.  Yesterday was the end of a year that began 366 days ago.

How much different would our lives be if we paused daily at the end of each “year” to evaluate our lives and on the basis of those evaluations, determine to make some adjustments to the way we live and breathe and have our being?  Imagine it, living from day to day … each day beginning with the thoughts penned by Frances Havergal: