May is the month for the last Spring planting, at least in Texas, as it will get just too hot to try and start a new plant. Also May can be the end of cool evenings and the continuation of warm nights and even beginning some of those hot evenings. In many households, this is the end of one school year and the start of Summer activities, as well as the beginning of plans for Fall attendance, perhaps in another school. For some this means the closing up of one house and heading for the lake or mountains.
In church this month in 2012, we mark the end of the Easter Season and the beginning of Pentecost. One should not hastily say that it is also the end of a focus solely on Jesus and the beginning of single-minded concentration on the Holy Spirit and the Church (the Spirit’s creation). But it could be the end of a focus on the earthly Jesus and a beginning again to realize the empowerment that the risen Jesus gives his followers. In May, we are invited to end a focus on the great person Jesus was while he ministered on earth in First Century Palestine and refocus on the risen Christ who brings new beginnings – an Easter full of resurrection experiences and a Pentecost full of God’s power given into our lives. OK, and I will drag out Baptism too, an end to the impediment of sin, a beginning of new life that we can claim as we confess and receive forgiveness in church and in front of those we trespass against, as well as an end to the separation from those who have sinned against us as they confess to us and we begin a new relationship by forgiving them.
May then is like that old camp ditty: “This is the song that never ends.” Christian have a faith life that never stops, each ending opens up a beginning, each confession frees for new life, each closure of a church season opens up an experience of another aspect of the Lord as well as an opportunity to know more about God for us!
Here comes the end, welcome to the beginning; here comes the beginning, welcome to the end.
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