An Ending and a Beginning

November 6, 2018 Roland Kuhl 2 Comments

Today is November 6, 2018.  It’s mid-term’s election day in the US and the Democrats are hoping to gain enough seats to control the house, but the Republicans are seeking to increase seats in the Senate.

Today is also an ending for me – the last day of my 63^rd year because I am turning 63 years old tomorrow.

Sixty-three years is a long time from 1955, when the world was a very different place, just ten years after World War II, ten years before the war in Vietnam began escalating, and the last 18 years, living here in the United States, have been nothing but involvement in war – Afghanistan (the longest war in U.S. history). I am not sure why I am focused on conflict and war, except for the fact that we currently live in a time in American history where we have a president who intentionally seeks to create dissension between people and countries. Perhaps other presidents have done this more behind the scenes, but this president blatantly goads people to be more racist, sexist, hateful toward almost everyone else. What baffles me in the midst of this is that many who say they identify with Jesus – such as conservative evangelicals, blindly support this president who characterizes a way of being that clearly denies and opposes the way of Jesus, the way of shalom, the purpose of what God seeks to accomplish through his people in the world. It is enough for me to no longer identify as an evangelical, perhaps even Christian (at least how it’s expressed in the consumerist context of North America), as I seek to live as a disciple of Jesus in the world.

So, last day of my 63^rd year – and I am challenging myself to blog on a daily basis as I live in and through my sixty-fourth year. I got the idea for this from a book I found on the shelves at Goodwill. A book by Ian Brown (2016), entitled, Sixty: A diary of my sixty-first year. Though he notes that he has the discipline of a mayfly (p. x), which I fear may be the case for me as well, he attempted to record his sixty-first year as he reflected on his unfolding days. So, that is what I am committing myself to as well – hopefully I will post something everyday (and maybe with a photo or two) to reveal my aging and, perhaps, growing in wisdom, process in my sixty-fourth year.

As I contemplate endings – not the ending of my life, though I am well into the last third of my life, but the end of another year, I realize that our whole life is about coming to endings in order to begin again – New Year’s Eve with Auld Lang Syne and New Year’s Day, finishing school, work, even relationships and embarking on a new path in life leaving behind the comfortable routines which were once also new, and birthdays. Birthdays seem to mark the end and beginning all at once – end of one year, opening up the next. Often, we do not mark it – it is just another day. However, if we did make it more special – realizing that a year has come to an end, and the opportunities of a new year lie in front of us – would we make something different of our coming year?

Well, I am going to give it a shot – have eyes and ears more open, seeking to discern the moving of the Spirit more (in me and around me), to see what God is up to in the world so that I can participate with what God is doing as a sign, foretaste and instrument of God’s present and coming reign. With that, I look forward to tomorrow and the beginning of my sixty-fourth year. Shalom!