The Place for New Beginnings
As I travel down the road to the grocery store, I pass an area that used to be a popular golf course.
Today it is in the early phases of what will soon be an exceptionally large housing development called Allen Park whose theme is, “The Place for New Beginnings.”
Also, as I head north near the end of summer, I will visit with my nephew and his family.
He pastors a church in a small Western New York town, and the church’s name is New Beginnings Baptist Church.
Finally, as I look outside at the trees, most of which are fully leafed out now, I am reminded of how the earth is experiencing spring’s new beginning of growth and productivity with flowers popping up everywhere and seedlings sprouting up in recently-planted gardens.
All these events make me think of the poem by Louisa Fletcher Tarkington, “The Land of Beginning Again,” the first stanza of which reads:
I wish there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches,
And all our poor, selfish griefs
Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door,
And never put on again.
A new beginning!
A chance to start again without the weight of the mistake-ridden, sin-riddled past—
What a comforting, anticipated thought because there truly is such a place where everything will be new, and it is found at the Cross with saving faith in Jesus Christ!
There, we are promised Heaven—
But it’s not a wish as the poem states.
Rather, it is a hope.
A reality.
As I compose this, it was exactly two years ago today when that place became reality for my dad as he was able to look into the face of Jesus for the first time just three weeks after my mom did.
Heaven truly is a place, where in the ages to come, God will show us “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).
Today, if you are sorrowing or struggling, if you are feeling uncertain or unloved, know that you can be a new creature in Jesus Christ, where old things are passed away and all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Everything you need to know for life and godliness is found in God’s Word.
Allow the Word of Christ to dwell in you richly . . . today!
Grateful that Jesus gave me a new beginning in Him,
Mrs. Debbie Milton