Why do things begin?  The obvious answer is, of course, that if things never begin, things that are here, us included, would not be here.  Things had to begin in order that things could be.  Conversely, however, if things did not begin, things would not end.
     Yet why must things end?  Why can not things begin and never end?  Maybe the seeming impossibility of this possibility accounts for in part why we finite beings have so much trouble grasping the notion of eternity.  We expect beginnings, we expect endings.  But we do not expect beginnings without endings.  Nor do we expect endings without beginnings.  Comprehending a condition with neither beginning nor end leaves us gasping for breath:  how can such a thing be?
     Some may find this frightening, others ludicrous.  As we draw ever closer to the final denouement of Lent, however, it makes perfect sense.  Why else would an eternal God have spoken, in the person of Jesus, to finite beings if eternity did not exist, good as well as bad, waiting, upon our earthly passing, for us to step into it?
     In the hourglass of eternity, things not eternal must begin.  They also must end.  Yet eternity must always remain, moral structure and all, boggling our senses and imaginations, ever underscoring for us that without it, nothing else can really begin.  How else would we be here?