The Beauty of Good Beginnings
January 5, 1969
“There is a human instinct,” said Phillips Brooks, “which tells us the [while] our life…is meant to have a great continuousness…[it is also] meant to be full of new starts…It is the same life from the its beginning…yet is forever …refreshing its forces… It loves to turn sharp corners into unseen ways… In many ways there is a sense of stir and start about us … It is sad indeed when…each new day does not seem to begin the world anew, recalling every departed hope and brightening every faded color of the night before… He must be dull who does not feel…the beauty of beginnings…the newness of each new day…[which] keeps us from degenerating into [monotony and] mechanical routine.” Those are wonderful words: “The beauty of beginnings.”
“Look over the world,” said Carlyle, “Is it not wonderful…This Earth, God made it for you;… you can live in it; go to and for on it.” “O my young friends, the world is beautiful and … life is full or promise.”1
Each new day is a blessing; each hour is an opportunity. Work at it, learn from it, enjoy it, improve it, improve yourselves, respect life, and live by its laws.
Thank God that there is purpose, that there is order and design and wisdom over-all and that we have another day, another hour, another chance, another season to shape ourselves. Before us all there is always the new beginning, and the endlessness of everlasting life. Thank God for the beauty of good beginnings – and that there is no one who cannot improve upon the past.