We meet today, O Lord, at the beginning of a new month.

“Beginning” a word that bespeaks of freshness, of hope, of promise.

A word not unknown to us seniors. We have faced many beginnings. And too many endings.

Now we ask your help, O Lord, that whatever may come, we continue to look upon each new day as a new beginning; a new promise of hope. A new day well worth the living.

Today is the second day of Passover. It commemorates the beginning of a new life for the Jews, having been liberated from slavery in ancient Egypt, and with Moses at the helm, crossing the Red Sea, and then spending forty years in the desert, until a new generation had grown, free from slavery, and ready to begin a new life in Israel. The story of Passover focuses on God’s power to save the Jewish people, in spite of the hopelessness of the situation.

No doubt, as my grandmother wrote, “beginnings” signify freshness, of hope, of promise. In a sense, so do “endings.” An endings isn’t always final. It could be a fork-in-the-road, realization that points to a previously overlooked opportunity or cessation of an unpleasant experience.

What one does with their endings is what determines the success of their beginnings. For the Jews in Egypt, the ending of their enslavement presented the promise of a new life, and the hope of generations who every year could celebrate the miracle of a new days, and the promise of a better tomorrow.