The Jewish theologian Chaim Potok in his book IN THE BEGINNING wrote:
I can remember hearing my mother murmur those words while I lay in bed with fever: “Children are often sick, darling. That’s the way with children. All beginnings are hard. You’ll be all right soon.”
I remember bursting into tears one evening because a passage of Bible commentary had proved too difficult for me to understand. I was about nine years old at the time. “You want to understand everything immediately?” my father said. “Just like that? You only began to study this commentary last week. All beginnings are hard. You have to work at the job of studying. Go over it again and again.”
The man who later guided me in my studies would welcome me warmly into his apartment and, when we sat at his desk, say to me in his gentile voice, “Be patient, David. The Midrash says, ‘All beginnings are hard.’ You cannot swallow all the world at one time.”
I say it to myself today when I stand before a new class at the beginning of a school year or am about to start a new book or research paper: All beginnings are hard…And sometimes I add what I have learned on my own: “Especially a beginning that you make by yourself. That’s the hardest beginning of all.”
On some level January 1, 2008 marks a new beginning for all of us. And all beginnings are hard, especially a beginning that you make by yourself. Therefore I hope and pray that all of our beginnings in 2008 are made easier by friends, family and of course God beside us on the journey of life.
Happy New Year!
