We traveled to my growing-up state (Alabama) for the first part of spring break, and spring has sprung there! I took this while on a walk in the woods.

I recently participated in a journal-writing session. “Write about an ending,” the instructor told us, “whatever ending comes to mind. Don’t hold back, don’t erase or scribble out, just write.”

I wrote about a relationship I would like to end—in order to start it anew, with no expectations other than authenticity. I was not surprised by the pain I felt as I wrote, but I was startled by the hope that edged its way in as I dreamed about a new beginning for this relationship. I thought I’d given up on it.

After the instructor announced, “Time’s up!” she asked if any wanted to share. Several brave writers did, and my heart broke for the pain they revealed. Suicide, divorce, death of an infant child… We felt weighed down by the sorrow of it all and yet freed to share our own hurt. After each person read, a moment of silence hung. Those near the reader often reached out and touched a shoulder, a hand. Others pushed the tissue box down the long table. Some looked directly at the reader, conveying sympathy with their eyes; others bowed heads in prayer. Often the next person who volunteered sat next to the one who’d just read, as if to say, “I share your pain. Mine may look different, but I’ve known an ending that brought loss, too.”

I’ve thought off-and-on about that journal writing session, sometimes praying for the relationship I wrote about, sometimes praying for one or another of my fellow writers. It’s what came to mind this morning when I sat down at my computer and thought about this Good Friday post. And though I soon had a focus, the actual writing of it was choppy, interrupted by my children (home on spring break), meal prep, and a visit to church.

I went to church for the Stations of the Cross: fourteen stations, fourteen crosses. We walked from one to another of them, following the figurative path Christ took, beginning at the garden and walking then to betrayal, condemnation, denial and desertion, scourging, the bearing of the cross, the crucifixion, encounter with the thief, care of the Virgin Mary, death, and entombment.

When we finished, my mother-in-law, who’d walked with me, said, “I kept thinking about how He knew what was next, how He knew what was at the end of it, yet He kept going.”

As I came home and continued writing this post, the stations and the journal writing connected. I realized Christ went purposely toward His Good Friday ending so we could have a beginning, so we could have life (I Thessalonians 5:10).

So that one day, that life—that Easter life—could be fully realized.

John was given a vision of that Easter life. He shared it with us in Revelation:

“’Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’ And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new!’ And he also said, ‘It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End.’  (taken from Revelation 21:4-6) 

Christ is the End of all sad, bitter endings.

He is the Beginning of all that is new.

And His Beginning will have no end.