A Fallen Angel, But Flying High!

In Switzerland, as one travels up the Engelberg valley, there is a place called "The End Of The World". A winding road suddenly stops...apparently one can go no further. But there at the "end of the world", there is a little Inn, a place to stop for refreshment before climbing the trail ahead.

This is symbolic of our lives. So many times, we come to barriers, pitfalls, tensions, and we are hemmed in on all sides. We have reached the end of our rope. We can go no further. And just at that point, we need the Inn of our Faith, a place to stop and consider.

Perhaps the New Year is just such a place and time. It has been said that "man's extremity is God's opportunity". And at the end of the old year, we still have our old anxieties, old fears, old sins. They are still with us. But when the children of God get at their wit's end, then God has a chance of making His will known to them. If there is an "old man", there is also a "new birth", and our spiritual life offers antibiotics for the soul, and spiritual penicillin for despair. The "end" also offers new beginnings.

There is a contemporary song that goes something like this: "I'm just a fallen angel, but I'm flying high!" There is little virtue in any of us. So many of us have sinned badly, fallen, "goofed up"...really messed up the old year, but through the new birth in Jesus Christ, we can once again, "fly high".

It was Susan Coolidge in her poem, "Begin Again" who said so beautifully:

Every day is a fresh beginning.
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrow, and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted, and possible pain.
Take heart with the day, and begin again.