There is much wisdom in the Bible about how to approach the passage of time, as Premier Unbelievable? says goodbye to 2024
Every New Year’s Eve, as I hold my glass aloft waiting for the clock to strike twelve, I have an involuntary moment of panic. My heart skips a beat and my mind races as I process that the coming of the new year means the death of the old one. The fact that I will never live another moment under the old calendar startles me. It is the same fear many of us feel on our birthday knowing we cannot reverse the clock, or the cold feet we experience on our wedding day realising we will never be single again. It is the fear of endings. So, what does the Bible have to say about endings? What wisdom can we glean in how to process the passing of time? In searching the scriptures to find the answer, I have learned three lessons.
Endings Are natural. Death is Not
“In the beginning… God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day” (Genesis 1:1,5 NIV). From the very first day, God established the laws and restraints of time. He expressed them through a pattern of change: day and night. The pattern presumes an end, evening, and a beginning, morning. In essence, time is just that, a cycle of moments ending, beginning, and ending again. It is important to realise that the creation of time comes before the fall of mankind. Although the nature of time during this period is unknown, Adam and Eve lived in the cycle of day and night before eating the forbidden fruit. Time, and therefore endings, were not a mistake, but a created part of the natural world. A part so essential, in the creation narrative, God chose to make it on the first day along with light and darkness. If God created endings, we can be confident that although we may fear them, they are not evil within themselves. The passage of time is not part of the curse. Instead, it is a part of God’s created order.
On the other hand, there is an unnatural ending. In Genesis 2, God says, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17 NIV). When Adam eats the fruit in Genesis 3, he brings the curse of death upon himself and his descendants. As St. Paul writes, “death came through a man… For as in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:21a, 22a, NIV). Death then, is not natural but instead brought about by the rebellion of man. It is man who brings this corrupting, ultimate end into our world. Being apart from God, death is inherently evil, wrong, and painful. We are right to feel pain at the ultimate end of things here on earth. We are right to cry at the funeral of a loved one or even months later. We are right to feel sorrow when we see an animal killed on the road or a forest destroyed by fire. Death goes against our very being and nature as humans.
Endings and the passage of time are natural parts of God’s created world but death is unnatural and inhumane. How do we live life reconciling these two truths?
To everything, there is a season
Ecclesiastes, like the other pieces of wisdom literature, functions as a Biblical guide to living in our world. In particular, it reveals the truth of life “under the sun.” The hardships as well as the joys, the pitfalls as well as the path. In chapter 3, we are given insight into the mystery of endings and beginnings, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 NIV). In these verses, the author instructs our posture toward endings, beginnings, and the passage of time. Simply put “there is a time for everything.” There is a time for endings and there is a time for beginnings. Each must happen in the course of life. It is a truth we learn to bear, seasons we learn to live through. Sometimes we laugh, dance, and build anew in those moments. On New Year’s Eve we celebrate and rejoice in the passing of the old year and the birth of the new one. Other times we mourn, uproot, and tear down. Those are the endings we memorialise at funerals and the beginning we find at another dead-end job. Still, Ecclesiastes is teaching us that all these things must happen. Each season must come here on earth. Time keeps ticking on our spinning globe. Our posture while on earth, the author of Ecclesiastes writes, must be willing and ready to accept both the bad and good endings and beginnings.
God Is the Alpha and Omega
At the end of the Bible, we learn what might be the most important truth about endings and beginnings. In Revelation 22 God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelations 22:13 NIV). This is a deep revelation of God’s nature, one we cannot fully understand. Like most aspects of God, such as the nature of the Trinity, we can only partially understand how he is Alpha and Omega. What we can know is that God is and was and will be. He was at the beginning and he will be at the end. The very confines of time have no power over him. He is unbound by the clock he created or the calendar we assigned to it. It is so essential to his nature that it is even in his name. His covenant name, as he revealed to Moses, is I AM or Yahweh. In Hebrew, Yahweh implies both of the Hebrew tenses, signifying he was not simply in the past or he is not simply now, but he was and is at all times. He is the beginning and the end. As humans still under the creation of time, we can glean a few applications from this deep truth. First, God is always with us. As children of God, there is no reason to fear endings or change. The concept of time which seems to drag us to our deaths has no power over him. As we enter into the new year, we do not need to worry that God may leave us or may change. God’s nature as beginning and end also teaches us that he has ultimate power over these things. Even the end we find in death lies in His control. That final end he turns into the most beautiful of new beginnings. When we lie down for our last evening he turns it into a joyous morning. His children receive the promise of a new life which never ends. Forever we will be going “further up and further in” as C. S. Lewis famously puts it. With every step in the new world we will be discovering the Alpha and the Omega.
So in this New Year, reflect on the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Remember, endings and beginnings are natural things that must happen in their season, and they are in the total control of God. Be reminded and rejoice in this small picture of the final ending. It is coming quickly and bringing new life with it. “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22 NIV).
Micah Foster is a digital media major at Harford Community College. After graduating with his associates degree, he hopes to pursue further training in biblical studies. He loves thinking and writing about how the Christian faith affects every aspect of life.