Endings, Beginnings, and a God Who Listens
An End-of-the-year Reflection
I have been delaying my end-of-the-year reflection.
Not because nothing happened, but because too much did.
The past year carried both endings and beginnings, often arriving together and refusing to be neatly separated. Some changes were chosen, others arrived uninvited. There were moments of gratitude, moments of grief, and many conversations (some hopeful, some tearful) about what it means to move forward when the path ahead is still unclear.
And yet, even here, there are many reasons to be thankful.
Last Sunday, Psalm 116 was mentioned during the service. I returned to it later, and the opening verses met me more gently than I expected:
I love the Lord, because he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.
The psalmist begins not with abstraction, but relationship.
“I love the Lord,” and then he tells us why.
Not because life is easy, but because God hears.
Because God listens.
Because God does not turn away from cries for mercy.
That, I recognize. To be heard. To be attended to. To cry out and not be dismissed. There is a quiet joy in knowing that our prayers do not disappear into silence.
As the psalm continues, it becomes clear that this is a testimony spoken after distress. The psalmist looks back on a season of fear and anxiety, on a time when death felt close, and remembers that he called on God anyway. He did not sanitize his emotions, edit his thoughts, or refine his prayers. He spoke honestly, and God responded. God protected him. God saved him.
Gratitude, in this psalm, is not theoretical. It is rooted in memory, in having lived through something that could have ended differently.
But then the psalm turns in a way that unsettles me:
Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones.
I stumbled here.
What does this mean?
Is the psalmist saying that God grieves when his people die? But how does that fit with the hope of being with God beyond death? Is this verse speaking to those left behind? The ones who mourn? Or is the psalmist speaking about himself, reflecting on how close he came to dying?
This is, after all, a deeply personal psalm.
Perhaps the psalmist is holding something more layered than a simple answer.
He is grateful that God saved him from death.
But he is also confessing that even if God had not, his life — and even his death — would still have mattered deeply to God.
The word translated precious does not mean pleasant or desirable. It carries the sense of something costly, weighty, not taken lightly. In other words, the death of God’s faithful ones is not insignificant. It is not cheap. It does not pass unnoticed.
That realization does not weaken the psalm. It strengthens it.
The psalmist’s gratitude is not naïve. It is not built on the assumption that God always intervenes in the way we hope. It is shaped by the recognition that God’s faithfulness is not hostage to outcomes.
His praise is not built on the fragile logic that says, God is good because I survived.
It rests on something sturdier: God is good because I am seen, heard, and held — whether in life or in death.
And so the psalmist vows to keep walking in God’s presence.
To keep calling on the Lord’s name.
To keep living a life of gratitude, not because everything turned out well, but because God remained attentive throughout.
That feels important to name as this year comes to a close.
Some prayers are still unanswered.
Some doors have not opened.
Some questions remain unresolved.
And yet, God hears.
God listens.
God saves, sometimes in ways we recognize, sometimes in ways we only understand later.
God protects.
God is merciful.
God cares.
Gratitude does not cancel the questions.
But neither do the questions cancel gratitude.
Gratitude does not require resolution.
It requires memory, honesty, and the courage to keep calling on a God who listens.
So I repeat this to myself, not as denial, but as confession:
There are still so many reasons to be thankful.
Even here.
A Closing Prayer
God who listens,
You hear our voices and our cries for mercy.
You see the endings we did not choose
and the beginnings we step into with uncertainty.
Teach us to remember where You have been near,
and give us the courage to keep calling on You
even when prayers remain unanswered.
Hold us in gratitude that does not deny grief,
and in hope that does not demand resolution.
Help us walk in Your presence,
knowing that we are seen, heard, and held —
even here.
Amen.