Begin Again

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Narration: Michael McGowan, Violin: Kristin McGowan

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We love to begin. Beginnings are exciting times.

We don't know what is ahead, but somehow we feel a sense of adventure. Literally anything seems possible. We feel limitless. A new school year, a new job, a new home, a new relationship, a new chapter in life—we turn the page and, for a moment, the future seems full of possibility.

But why is this?

So much of life can be filled with difficult moments, when our seemingly futile efforts to improve things are pushed back by the vagaries of life: unfortunate circumstances, bad luck, disappointment, failure, even mean people.

And yet, when we are faced with a new beginning, something happens inside us. We become hopeful again.

Where does that optimism come from?

Where does this impulse come from in the human mind and heart to turn over a new leaf? Why do we believe that tomorrow might be different from today?

Why plant a seed when we know that life is difficult?

Perhaps the answer is that this is what God did.

Before we were present, God was present. Before there was a world, there was God. And in creating the world, He planted the seed of life itself.

Perhaps He put that hope in us then.

And perhaps He puts it in us again and again.

The very impulse to begin again—to hope, to try, to plant, to create, to love—may be something of the image of God within us. His Spirit animates our lives. He gives us breath, and with every breath there is the possibility of beginning again.

I recently heard a wonderful quote from the Scottish author John Burnside that opened my mind to this in a new way:

“Everything begins before we see it beginning.”

There is something profoundly Christian about those words.

Christ Himself began before we saw Him beginning.

His earthly life began at His birth, but He did not begin there. He existed before His birth. He was present before we could see Him. As St Paul tells us:

“He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Christ was there before creation itself.

And perhaps this is the great mystery of life: it begins before we can see it.

Think of a seed. We place it in the earth, and for a while nothing seems to happen. There is no visible life. We might look at the soil and see nothing at all. But beneath the surface, something has already begun.

At Easter, Christ entered the earth in death. To those who watched, it appeared that life had ended. The story was over. But beneath the surface, something had already begun.

The Resurrection was not the beginning of Christ's life. It was the moment when a life that had already begun became visible again.

Life itself is the most mysterious thing of all.

A child is conceived, and for months we cannot see the life that is growing. Yet something has begun. Long before we see a face, hear a cry, or hold a child in our arms, life is already there.

Everything begins before we see it beginning.

Perhaps that is why beginnings fill us with hope.

Somewhere deep within us, we know that what we can see is not the whole story. We know, somehow, that life is always capable of becoming something more than it appears to be at this moment.

We plant the seed because we believe in what we cannot yet see.

We begin again because, somewhere within us, we believe that life is still coming.

And perhaps that little spark of hope is not foolishness at all.

Perhaps it is faith.

I began thinking about all of this while in Scotland, and it struck me that the story of Christianity in Ireland began with a very literal beginning again.

Patrick tells us that, as a young man, he was without direction and far from God. He later described himself as being “like a stone lying in the deep mire.” It is a remarkable image. A stone in the mire does not simply need encouragement. It cannot pull itself out. It is stuck. It has no means of movement.

There are times when life can feel like that. We may know that something needs to change, yet find ourselves unable to change it. Our own efforts seem insufficient. We are like the stone in the mire—alive, perhaps, but unable to move ourselves toward a different life.

And yet Patrick was moved.

He understood this not as the triumph of his own will, but as an act of God's goodness. God provided the means by which he could be lifted from the mire. He gave him the life and strength necessary to begin again.

And what a beginning it was.

The young man who had been carried away from Ireland in slavery eventually returned voluntarily, carrying with him the faith that had taken root in him during those years of suffering. The circumstances that seemed to have destroyed his life became, mysteriously, part of the beginning of a new one.

Patrick's story reminds us that God does not merely ask us to begin again. He can give us the grace to do it.

And perhaps this is the deeper meaning of hope.

Hope is not simply our confidence that we can make everything better. Sometimes we cannot. Sometimes we are too deeply in the mire to pull ourselves out.

Hope is the belief that God can begin something in us that we cannot begin for ourselves.

Generations later, Irish monks crossed the sea to Scotland. They left behind what was familiar and began again in a strange land, carrying with them the faith that had taken root in Ireland. Each day brought its own beginning: another prayer, another journey, another act of service, another attempt to bring the light of Christ into a new place.

Perhaps this is how the Gospel moves through the world—not only in great moments, but through people willing to begin again.

Perhaps every beginning is an act of faith.

Perhaps every seed we plant is a declaration that we believe in life we cannot yet see.

And perhaps every time we begin again, we are participating in something that began long before us.

Before we were here, He was here.

Before we could hope, He had already planted hope within us.

And so we begin again.

Begin again.