Beginnings and Endings

 

‘Feel the calling of a miracle
In the presence of the word…
…In the beginning is the future
And the future is at hand’

From ‘The Calling’ by Yes (from the Album ‘Talk’)

 

As any of you who ever choose to read my occasional blog posts will be aware, I am the most indisciplined and occasional of bloggers. However, for many years now, I have regularly blogged during the Season of Advent which dawned yesterday. Some years I have even managed to post on a daily basis during Advent. But no promises for this year!

 

As I write this post I am listening to a podcast of yesterday’s choral service for Advent from St John’s College Cambridge. In 2014 when I was Minister of St Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh, we introduced a similar service for Advent Sunday. I always found it deeply meaningful with all the themes of hope, expectation, patience, watching, judgment, preparation, penitence and so on.

 

I have said before (more than once I suspect!) that the celebration of Christmas is all the more special for me when I allow Advent to be Advent and as I seek to hold off the intrusive Christmas that seeks to invade this season.

 

There is a sense of beginning and ending in this Season. On the one hand it is the beginning of the Christian year, and our preparation for celebrating the ‘dawn of our salvation’. On the other hand, we are approaching the ending of the calendar year and looking to that day when God will sum up all things.

 

Beginnings and endings.

 

This year I am more aware than ever of the endings that approach for me and also the new opportunities that are presenting themselves. I will retire in a very few months and so will come to a conclusion over 40 years of full-time ordained Ministry.

 

But there are new things happening too; new beginnings, if you will.

 

Our grand-daughter was born 18 months ago and our twin grandsons in the course of this year. I have, therefore, begun the new and delightful experience of being a grandfather. What a joy it is! (although, I also think that it is probably just as well that I will be retiring soon! Juggling all these responsibilities and demands feels quite tricky some weeks!).

 

It is not really the end of a story or the beginning of a new story, but the end of a chapter and the opening of the next. But it is – for me – very significant nonetheless. The changes being embraced in the current year or two have no real parallel in my life since the short period of a very few years when I became a husband, a father and a Minister.

 

Since then, there has been no season in my life quite as significant and dramatic. And I suppose that is a bit how I feel about Advent too. In these weeks we anticipate the coming of God amongst us – the Word made flesh – in the Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ our Lord, as we also anticipate and await his coming again in glory at the end of time.

 

Lots to ponder!

 

However, don’t expect too much for these blog posts! The way my thinking is going just now they may end up a bit of a hotch-potch of reflections on various themes…. We’ll see!