Is it the End? Or a New Beginning?

When I was a kid, I loved The Dark Crystal, a movie made by Jim Henson and filled with some pretty fabulous puppets. It’s a story about two elf-like creatures (called gelflings, if you must know) who must evade creepy buzzard-like creatures and battle gigantic beetles and, eventually, save their entire land. These gentle creatures turn out to be big players, cosmically speaking, and it’s no coincidence that they’ve made their presence known during something called the Great Conjunction.

“The Great Conjunction is the end of the world!” proclaims a weird womanish creature named Aughra. “Or the beginning.”

There are those who think we’re on the brink of the end of the world around here, and we we’re without a single gelfling. The long-count Mayan calendar is set to end Dec. 21, which has sent loads of New Age-y true believers running for the hills—in some cases literally. Some wanted to head to the French village of Bugarach, believing that the tiny town might be spared because of the cool mountain nearby. (The town said thanks, but commemorate the end of the world elsewhere.) Another mountain, Mt. Rtanj in Serbia, is also rumored to be a safe apocalyptic harbor. Living in Colorado Springs, I’m surprised we haven’t seen a surge of folks setting up shop on the slopes of Pikes Peak.

Experts say the only real “end” the Mayans were fortelling is the end of the calendar: Time to go to Hallmark and pick up another one.

But let me admit something to you. While I don’t believe the world will stop turning Dec. 21, there have been times when it’s felt like the end of the world.

The Newtown massacre hit lots of us pretty hard, and I think we might be excused for feeling, in the wake of the tragedy, that our culture was going a little wrong. There have been seven mass killings in 2012: Seven too many. It can feel as though we’re unsafe no matter where we go or what we do. A sick, unstable person has the power to take what’s most precious to us and tear our worlds apart.

We’re struggling with other issues, too. The Fiscal Cliff. Climate change. Uprisings in the Middle East. Economic strife in Europe. It’s hard to be a glass-half-full sort of person when the glass seems full of holes.

There’s a reason why the Mayans pegged Dec. 21 as the day their calendar ended. It’s the winter solstice—a natural completion of a year and the shortest, darkest day of the year. It was a time when the land was at its bleakest and gloomiest. Perhaps those not familiar with the cyclical nature of the seasons might wonder whether things would ever get better. The solstice was, in many cultures, a time of celebration—a seasonal understanding that, yeah, things may look pretty black now, but they’re bound to get brighter; bound to get better.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the Christian Church chose to celebrate Christ’s birth on Dec 25, so very close to the solstice (most scholars seem to think Jesus was probably born in the spring or fall), and why lights—from advent candles to LED displays—are such integral parts of celebrating Christmas.

Really, what better time is there to celebrate the arrival of the world’s only true light, only true hope, but in the darkest part of the year?

Things may look pretty bleak right now. The world feels dark and cold. I feel the chill everywhere. But as Christmas itself tells us, sometimes the darkest of times can bring life to the brightest of hopes. And though it may feel like the end of the world, it might be just a new beginning.  

Hurting

No more.

This is my primal, belly-deep cry as we reel from the news of another mass killing—this one perpetrated against the youngest, the most innocent. My brain races with a thousand thoughts; my heart hurts for the parents and kids; my soul asks the same questions yours does.

But my gut, it hollers. It begs. No more. No more.

Another gunman, shrouded in a bulletproof vest and armed with multiple guns, made news this morning. He walked into Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and opened fire. By the time he took his own life, at least 27 others were either dead or dying—20 of them children. A tragedy, we say.

But we’ve used that word so often in the last few years that it doesn’t seem to be enough. It can’t convey the anguish and desolation felt in Newtown tonight. Tragedy is too weak a word now. 

And I wonder … what were these children thinking about, talking about, five minutes before? Were they counting down the minutes ‘til Christmas vacation? Were they debating what to do at recess? Were they contemplating a mystery gift—a wrapped box underneath the tree—that they couldn’t wait to find out what it was?

Yesterday, I wrote of the infinite, that sense of promise and potential that youth feel so mightily at times. This evening, those words haunt me: For 20 children, that promise and potential was silenced. Twenty children found true infinite too soon.

We grieve now. As parents and children ourselves—no matter how distant we are from Connecticut, we grieve. We pray for the survivors, for the hurting parents, maybe the whole country. Perhaps, we try to console … if not those in Newtown, then at least ourselves. As Christians, perhaps, we try to offer what comfort we can. We remind (ourselves?) that God is with us in even these moments. That He feels our pain more sharply than we can imagine. That, even now, even in this, God is in control. That, perhaps even now, He embraces these little children and walks them into His eternal country.

I believe it. I believe it all. I believe that God can work through even the worst of moments. I’ve written so in the past—back when Aurora was the tragedy.

Less than five months ago.

It’s comforting to know, I suppose, that the Psalmists walked through moments and months like this, where the world seemed sick to the soul and the poets begged for relief.

My heart is in anguish within me

The terrors of death assail me.

Fear and trembling have beset me;

Horror has overwhelmed me.

I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest—I would flee far away and stay in the desert;

I would hurry to my place of shelter,

Far from the tempest and storm.

Psalm 55:4-6

And at the end of these anguished cries, the concluding lines are often the same. In Psalm 55, the last line is very simple: “But as for me, I trust in you.”

We hurt. We cry out. We long for the world to be made well—or, barring that, just better. Just saner. Just keep the killers from our children. Just keep the wolves from our door.

But God makes no promises. And so we walk on in the pit of tragedy, under the shadow of death. And in the end, all we can do is trust. That God will walk with us. That God, no matter what comes, is with us and cares for us and is, in his sometimes inexplicable way, leading us Home.