Good morning…
A well-loved subscriber from Jacksonville, Florida often sends me words of loving encouragement. This week she sent me the 5.4.17 blog of Maureen Ahearn Cully entitled “Begin with the End in Mind.” I resonate with these words as our oldest son graduates from college today and my youngest daughter graduates from high school next Sunday. I am grateful Cully shares God’s eternal wisdom.
“May is a month of change – it has both beginnings, and endings. One thing I am particularly thankful for is the end of “family” dinners at 9:30 at night (thank you spring sports, thank you Doubles Pizza). It is the beginning of our backyard vegetable garden, and the ending of our carrot/Brussel sprout disasters. For some, it may be the beginning of celebrating new life as a new parent, aunt, or grandparent, or the grieving of a life that was lost in the last year as you commemorate Mother’s Day in a new light. It may be the ending of our teenager’s (or in my case my goddaughter’s) senior year of high school, and the beginning of a whole new life ahead of them full of opportunities, possibilities and hope.
Whatever the change that May may happen to bring with the overwhelming – albeit joyful – celebrations of First Communions, Confirmations, Graduations, Grandparents’ Days, parties and showers galore, change brings change. And most humans are uncomfortable with change. Or a bit afraid of change. Or just downright hate change.
I was interviewing a very holy woman this week who ends her emails with the tagline, “Start at eternity, and work backwards!” She shared this with me, and it really made me reflect. It is so obvious, and so clear. If we begin with the end in mind, which is: we all want to go to heaven and be in God’s holy and loving presence forever, and we want to be there with the people we love. Uh, yeah? So then how to do we begin with the end in mind?”
I have seen what difficult things God demands of us. God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts questions in our minds about the past and the future. I know the best thing we can do is to always enjoy life, because God’s gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do. Everything God has done will last forever; nothing he does can ever be changed. God has done all this, so that we will worship him.
Everything that happens
has happened before,
and all that will be
has already been–
God does everything
over and over again (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15, CEV).
As God does the spring season over again, how might we live this May with eternity in mind?
…Sue…
