Endings and Beginnings

A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse; a branch will sprout from his roots.

— Isaiah 11:1 (CEB) 

Have you ever read a book, watched a film, or listened to a song that you wished would never end?  Endings, though they bring resolution, are also often sad.  They bring to a close what has been, and what comes next is often unclear.  In popular culture, an ending is a mark of finality. 

I think this is why Christ’s birth, ministry, death, and resurrection are so revolutionary.  Expectations are turned upside down; a shoot springs out of a stump; the King of Kings arrives as a helpless infant.  With Christ, the end is only the beginning.  Death leads to new life.  How fitting it is then that Advent, the beginning of the church year, falls at the end of the secular calendar year.  Just as the world is bidding farewell to 2026, Christians around the world are celebrating the new beginning marked by Christ’s birth.  Where the world marks an ending, God invites us to shift our focus to the new beginning that is emerging.

In this issue of The Upper Room, writers share experiences that show just how often our endings are also beginnings when we focus on God’s presence with us.  A call to ministry shifts into a call to care for animals.  A dream of running a school fades as God offers a different path.  Destructive floods reconfigure communities, requiring faithful imagination to rebuild.  In each ending we encounter, Christ calls us to also look for the beginning.  As we await the birth of Christ whose ending was our beginning, what new beginning is God revealing to you?