Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
So we bid farewell to 2019 and its joys, struggles, triumphs, and challenges. Will it prove to be the last hour foretold in 1 John? We can’t know, of course; God’s time and plans are on a plane beyond our understanding.
What we can understand is beginnings. And beginnings typically grow out of endings. It was likely no coincidence that John’s gospel begins with the same three words that open Genesis: “In the beginning.”
- We begin to trust God more, and end our futile attempts to control every aspect of our earthly lives.
- We begin to love our neighbor more, and end our criticism of his homily style, her choice of clothing, their political views.
- We begin to value ourselves more as children of the Father, and end our conscious or unconscious destruction of our bodies.
- We begin to spend more time with the Lord, and work to reduce our participation in today’s self-focused culture.
In the beginning was the Word, John tells us. And the Word is all we really need in the middle, and at the end as well.