Brand New Endings

Every once in awhile I'll pack up my mobile office and make the 30 minute drive up to the mountain community of Evergreen, CO. This has become a convenient refuge from city life, while providing the same cell phone and internet options that I have anywhere else. Any trip to Denver should include an excursion to this lovely spot.

My office for the day ended up at the Java Groove - a free WiFi spot with self-dispensing coffee refills and, as the name implies, a nice jazz audio background. Instead of live, open-mic poetry readings, this place features poetic quotes in chalk by the cash register. Today's quote is worth repeating...

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start,
Anyone can start now and make a brand new ending."

Ever feel dogged by the failures of your past? Wish you could start something over, take back a comment, erase a decision? Have you ever wanted to meet someone again for the first time, to start again without the hurts that now sabotage current attempts at relationship?

While many would like to erase small or large parts of the past, in fact it is those very failures that become our guides into the future. Without the first half of life failures, we wouldn't carry wisdom into the second half. It is through wounding a loved one that we learn what not to say, how not to act, and what offends rather than blesses. Countless are the number of second marriages that gain the benefit of the hard-knock lessons learned in the first one. And rare is it when we find a friend or spouse who will stick around through those brutal lessons learned only the hard way.

This may be the truest test of lasting love... that one would not only forgive that which is past - understanding that starting over is not an option - but would also participate in shaping a new end to the story.

Who would that be in your life today? Someone who has lost the right to your affection, who has failed miserably? Someone who wishes they could take back that hurtful moment and start over?

Someone who can't make a brand new start, but who wants to start in the direction of a brand new ending...

Only by God's grace toward us, and our grace toward others can this happen. Or as Paul states, "Forgive one another, just as in Christ God forgave you."

Toward a brand new ending.