The carnage is not the end of something. Rather, it can be the beginning of everything. And the manner in which the carnage serves us will depend on the manner in which we see it.

Without a beginning I am pouring the whole of my existence into the building of endings, while the cross and the resurrection declare that God is incessantly building beginnings from the collapse of endings.

One day I sat in the woods, which I found to be stunningly different than walking ‘through’ the woods. And in the sitting, the woods jumped to life with a spirited activity that I had scarcely ever seen or known to exist. And as I sat there turning this way and that in order to draw it all in, I thought that it was not the woods coming alive. Rather, it was me coming to a halt.

An ending is something like a caboose on a train that just pulled out so that there’s room for the train that’s now arriving. The problem is, we forget that a caboose is only one part of one train.

An ending is the result of something that was once a beginning. And a beginning is the result of something that was once an ending. And one without the other means that neither are possible, but both in combination means that just about anything is possible.

How many beginnings were held at bay because we refused to let an ending be an ending?

Without an ending there would be no beginning. And if I can’t imagine a life without beginnings, I can’t live without endings.

So how permanent is an ending? The answer depends on our belief in the permanence of beginnings. For if we hold to the latter, the former will be forced to hold to the same.

By far, an ending is the most direct path to a beginning.