Everything Happens for the Last Time

 

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For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; (Eccl. 3:1-2)

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THE LAST TIME

Our lives have wonderful recurring moments; they provide the rhythm of our days.

Kissing your life partner good morning and good night are beautiful markers in our daily routine. Having all your children home for Christmas is an annual treat. Sharing the anticipation of a cruise with your travel companion is much of the fun of the repeated holidays. Sharing a regular meal with your friends is a ritual that gives a sense of belonging.

There will, of course, be a last kiss. Your children may someday have families of their own, and there will come a year when they do not return to you for the holidays. There will be a final bon voyage celebration. Friends move away, and the meals will cease.

All these good things will happen for the last time. To realize these beautiful moments will someday come to an end is bittersweet. They orchestrate life with joy; their cessation will come as a loss.

Our lives are also punctuated by difficult, demanding, and tedious experiences that come around time after time.

The drive to work each day in rush hour traffic is nerve wracking. The treatments are uncomfortable and leave us exhausted. The monthly report we must produce is tedious to complete.

The day will come when we drive to work for the last time, have the last treatment, and do that final monthly report. The end of these things will be welcomed with relief.

RETIREMENT

I began vocational ministry in the Spring of 1992. I served as a local church pastor for ten years, then as an ABC overseas missionary for the next ten years, and as Executive Minister of ABCNYS for the final thirteen years. On May 30^th this thirty-three-year vocational journey will end.

These days, I am experiencing some “last times.”

We finished our quarterly ABCNYS Board of Mission meeting several weeks ago. As I packed up after the meeting, I realized this was my last board meeting. I am visiting churches these last few months, each one for the last time. I am having conversations with people, many of them for the last time. Sometimes I say, “I’ll see you” or “talk with you later;” then I realized I may well not. 

I have become aware that things are happening for the last time; most of them are good things I will miss.

I will not miss all these things: installing the window air conditioners at the office; sorting the wheat from the chaff in endless waves of email; and heading out early on dark snowy mornings on my way to another church. I am sensing that even the tiresome parts of ministry have been a part of the reliable rhythm of my life and have given meaning and purpose to my days. I will notice their absence even if I do not long for them.

It is because everything happens for the last time, that life is precious.

LIIFE IS PASSING BUT NOT FUTILE

The writer of Ecclesiastes knows that life is like water under a bridge.  The writer finishes chapter 3 with:

 I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it; God has done this so that all should stand in awe before him (15).

Although everything happens for the last time, none of it is futile. What God does through us is not passing. In the rhythms of our lives God is building lasting things.

 

One season of my life is passing. Things are happening for the last time. What will the next chapter hold? I don’t really know. I will see what comes up and treasure it, for I know it too will pass one day.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister (for now)—American Baptist Churches of New York State