Still With Us: Hope for New BeginningsНамуна

I made a new resolution at the end of November. Whether it’s a very late 2020 resolution or a premature 2021 resolution I can’t tell, but I’ve resolved to build the habit of not snoozing.

So simple, right? And yet so difficult in practice when my bed is a refuge from the cold and my eyes beg me for just one more moment shut.

I’ve been waking up right on the edge of dark and light, and as I start my kettle for tea the sun starts to rise. I breathe in the newness of beginnings as the year pushes on to its end.

With the year that we’ve had, my guess is that many of us can’t wait for it to end. Let’s put up the tree and call it a year! a popular meme declared, and I eagerly forwarded to my friends back in September. And now the tree is up and the the lists come fast and furious: wrap up your goals for this final quarter, reflect on what you’ve learned, squeeze in one more meeting or three before the holidays, get the kids’ presents in order, make some new resolutions, make the travel plans--or, more often this year, cancel them. The December rush overtakes us, and we move about frantically like we’re waving our arms in a dark room, trying to trigger motion-censored lights, willing to do whatever dance it takes to bring this strange and difficult year to a close. 

What sign of hope are we waiting for? For so many, the strike of the clock at midnight marks more than the end of the previous year and the beginning of the next. It signals a clear transition, a fresh start, a reason to hope. New year, new me. 

Our brains crave clean endings and clean beginnings. But if you’ve ever found things exactly the same after the stroke of midnight, if you’ve ever failed your new year’s resolution by day 3, or if this year was just another bad year in a string of bad years… endings and beginnings and change feel far more complicated than buying a new calendar. 

Life more often contains both: endings and beginnings overlapping. Learning what it means to be an adult at the same time while your family is still holding onto the pimply ninth-grade version of you. Starting a new job while tying up strings from an old one. Still loving someone who is no longer in your life. Raising kids while still figuring out how to grow up yourself. Realizing a new dream while in the middle of something else.

Chapters in life aren’t always so clear cut as counting down the seconds to midnight. There’s not always a new page and a big number at the top to tell you you’ve made it to the next one. We don’t need to wait for the thing we wish were over to find something good, something new in the midst of it. 

When I think of the ministry of Christ, I think about that overlapping space of beginnings and endings. Mary’s pregnancy before her marriage, a not-so-neat transition to a different chapter of her life. Jesus’s single-minded focus on where he was to end up, Cavalry, even as he began his ministry. The stopping of stoning, of bleeding, of shame--before a neat beginning marked by repentance or declaration of faith. The death and resurrection of Lazarus, a miracle and a mess of endings and beginnings intertwined.  

The miracles often come in this muddy mix of endings and beginnings, and perhaps the end of this year is not quite as neat as you would hope. Perhaps you are unsure if change as quickly as you pray it will. And perhaps you are waiting for a change. But maybe in this mud, this unlikely clump of spit and dirt, this messy mix of unclear endings and beginnings is a miracle that is stirring. 

We don’t have to wait for the end of uncertainty before we can move with purpose. We don’t have to wait until everything is perfect to take steps of faith. You don’t have to see with clarity to know that God does some of His best work with dirt.