An ending is only happening because at some point it was a beginning. And if an ending is dependent upon a beginning, I would be well advised to focus on the miracle of beginnings verses the pain of endings.

Sure, things die. Yet hard on the heels of every death there comes a birth. And if the life around me is being perpetually refreshed in such a relentless manner, why would I think that the life within me can’t have the same experience.

Too often our lives are soiled to desperation by endings that in reality are magnificently outnumbered by beginnings. And unless we become convinced that an ending is always the birthplace of a beginning that is on its way, we will live terribly soiled lives.

A sunset is nothing more and nothing less than the backside of a sunrise.

An end is only a beginning in disguise.

We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage.

We can’t even remotely fathom that whatever is ending for us is always more than an ending.

And because it’s all that we can see, the ending becomes an end in itself when directly ahead of us new beginnings are being forged and fresh byways are being laid out from the very ending that we’re caught up in.

Jesus was born in a borrowed barn, he was buried in a borrowed tomb, and in-between it all he borrowed mankind’s sin with the intent of never returning it.