This has NOT been a normal year.

There’s a big part of me that trembles at 2011.  Yet there’s another part of me that knows deeply and intimately that all pain, all grief, all difficulty, all chaos and catastrophe…   HAS AN END.

But His glory, His majesty, His beauty has no end.

Our eternal joy, our eternal Love, our eternal peace, victory and ecstatic union with Him

HAS NO END.

Death only lasted three days.

Resurrection Life is eternal.

Firefighters of Ladder Company 4 — which lost seven men on 9/11 — perched together on their aerial ladder, watching a news bulletin in Times Square declaring that Osama bin Laden was dead on May 2.

Cars are abandoned on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive during the “Snowpocalypse” in February.

Christians protect Muslims during prayer in Cairo, Egypt.

A monstrous dust storm (Haboob) roared through Phoenix, Arizona in July.

A before and after shot of Joplin, Missouri after a massive tornado on May 22

This sightseeing boat, Hama Yuri, was pulled 1300 feet from the coast and somehow balanced itself on a two story house during the tsunami in Japan.

An aerial shot of the damage immediately following the Japanese tsunami.

A mother comforts her son in Concord, Alabama, near his house which was completely destroyed by a tornado in April.

Chile’s Puyehue volcano erupts, causing air traffic cancellations across South America, New Zealand, Australia and forcing over 3,000 people to evacuate. (Reuters)

A woman jumps from a burning building during the London riots in August. (Amy Weston / WENN.com)