Start With the Beginning

One of my favorite songs by David Wilcox, the American folk singer and songwriter, is called Start with the Ending. With its playful, upbeat melody and tongue in cheek lyrics, mingled with more serious words of wisdom, the song manages to bring out some important truths. The first verse goes like this:

Secret of a happy marriage
Maybe you should write this down
You wanna keep a love together?
The best way is to end it now
When you both know it’s over
Suddenly the truth comes out
You can talk about your secret passion
You can talk about your restless doubts

The premise of the song, which Dave explains in a You Tube concert version, is that when two people realize that each is far from perfect, each is to find the other in one’s own brokenness. The recognition of one’s short-sightedness leads to clearer vision, as the second verse explains:

After you’ve both decided
You were missing something that you need
The ways that you were too short-sighted
Get easier for you to see
After all the expectations
Shatter on the kitchen floor
You just see another human suffering
And wonder what the war was for

In our chaotic culture, we sometimes lose sight of whom we are trying to reach. We have this amazing message that we want folks to receive (NFP is good for you!) and we may try many creative and positive ways to get the message out. When it falls on deaf ears, it can be easy to feel discouraged and frustrated. Yet, we do experience breakthroughs. Often, the breakthroughs occur after spending a good amount of time with a friend, a spouse, a colleague, a family member, a parishioner, or even a congregation. In the time spent together, truth is able to be received in the soul of one who is like a child.

Jesus Christ once said: “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” Lk 10:21 Our Lord knew what He was talking about. You see, whether one speaks of Jesus’s earthly ministry or the Son’s eternally divine Sonship, the Son always has an infinitely profound understanding that He is loved, as Son, by the Father in the Holy Spirit. Each of us is loved infinitely by God as His sons and daughters. Moreover, being made in God’s image, we are given the amazing gift, and important task, to love our own biological and spiritual children with all our hearts. We want them to know that they are loved so much that God sent His Son to die for them. In our human suffering, as David Wilcox sings, we are able to come to the truth that we are loved by another and by the Other who created us and died for us.

Start with the Ending has a happy ending by the way. The last verse goes like this:

Happy anniversary darlin’
We go back a long, long time
I think about our lives together
So grateful that you’re here in mine
And I know you’ll keep on changing
Moving in this dance with me
I love the way we embrace the future
And keep the past a memory

As we continue our journey together, may we start with the beginning, that is, The Beginning, when God created us and died for us, and never stops loving us. May we always know more and more how much He loves us as His sons and daughters and how much He desires that our sons and daughters know how He made us to be and how He made us to love.