Are you one of those? You know, the ones who like to read the last page of a book
first? As a lover of story I want to
encourage you to stay that hand and wait.
Wait for the end.
When
we read the end of a book before the beginning, we are assuming too much. We want to read the “good stuff” and in so
doing, we lose the richness of all the intricate details of the story. We lose
the weight of what the story truly means.
We miss the tension that brings fullness and life to the storytelling.
There are places in books where you can’t
stop reading and so you try to stay up all night to read what will happen next. And then there are times when you put it down
after reading one paragraph. Stories can
become redundant or dull. Excitement can
wane. We forget that excitement has its
price.
In order for there to be dashing rescues
or joyful meetings, there has to be conflict or pain. There has to be a problem that seems to have
no resolution, that looks as if all is lost.
When my daughter wanted to read Anne
Frank’s Diary this summer I cautioned her.
I warned her that the content and vocabulary may be challenging. She had a habit of being “one of those” who
started a book and then wanted to know what happened in the end by about
chapter two. And so I told her, “You may read the book, but only if you
finish all of it, without stopping or skipping ahead.” “Ok, I will Mom. I Promise.”
Bella singing stories of Christmas with the Wye Youth Chorale.
And yes, the moment came when she slumped
into a chair one morning to announce that she was done with Anne Frank. It was too slow, too boring, and much too
long. “Oh no, Bella. We have a deal,
remember?” And so, week after week,
she trudged through the novel. Sometimes
she would enlighten me with what she was reading and other times she would just
read because she had to. Then one day,
she finished the book.
On the day that she reached the end of all
283 pages of Anne Frank, she shared her thoughts on the experience with me. “Mom, I
cried. It was so sad.” “I know, but you know what, I am proud of you
for hanging in there. You did it.” “Why would anyone do that to someone? Those people didn’t even do anything wrong. I hope that never happens again.” And then I had to tell her that people still
do that today. The innocent are sought after
and killed just because of their race or their beliefs or because they are
inconvenient. I told her this is why
stories like Anne Frank’s are so important.
We must remember. She realized
the value in reading all of a book
that day, the boring, the exciting, the long, and the hard. And much like Bella, there are times when I
want to skip ahead to the “good parts” in life, instead of walking through the
difficulties.
There are moments of great oxygen
siphoning pain in life: when you see your husband carry your bloody child into
the ER, the moment when you find out about the inoperable brain tumor, or when
you hear of two people that once loved each other, now love each other no
more. Who can come and bring help to
these situations? Who can create another
eye, or heal a brain, or make two people love each other again? It looks hopeless,
and you feel helpless.
We know that each day is like another page
in a story, waiting to be read. But we
are a weary people and we need to rest from the events of the day. We turn the light off each night and close
the book. The story must wait until
tomorrow.
I love the picture of the setting and the
rising of the sun. The sun will set and
the sun will rise no matter what has transpired during the last 24 hours. It is constant. This cycle brings an end to the harsh sunlight
and the heat of the day; and it brings light and warmth to a cold dark
night. It gives hope for another day; hope
to remain in the story of life.
Many times we wake to the same
thoughts. The leftovers from yesterday’s
anxious feelings or unexpected bad news that paralyzes. We don’t see the subtle changes in our character
or the small progress in others’ lives.
We assume we know how it all will end. We are experts at prediction. Often we go ahead and shut the open book of
our lives and walk away. We have “read”
the end of story. We say, “I know how
this is going to go. No point in looking
for a different outcome here. Why raise
my hopes for something that just isn’t going to happen?”
But faith doesn’t work that way. Faith keeps working even when we do not see
the end. Faith keeps dipping His pen
into the ink to write another chapter, to add the details that broaden and
color our lives with grace and mercy and love.
We see a girl blossom into young adulthood
with 20/40 vision in her one eye, vision that has become clearer and more
compassionate. We find ourselves telling
other people with a smile and a tear, about a woman who loved life and loved
her God and left us all too soon. We
learn to pray for the impossible. We ask
for a dead marriage to be raised to life again.
We pray that the Author’s pen is still writing. We long for the story to continue until the
good part comes.
And it will come. The Author and Finisher of the faith of every
believer in His story writes with love and care. He is not like an earthly writer, scratching
out notes, throwing pages of a rough draft into the trash can, or leaving a work
unfinished. He writes truth, ensuring
that no word falls to the ground without a purpose. The goodness in His story comes now, in His
Words that are found and eaten; words that are healing, strengthening, caring, and sustaining. And the goodness that is still to come, when
He will make all wrongs right.
So we must wait for Him. Even though we cannot read the last page of our
own story, we can trust the Writer. We
become strong as we read the stories of those gone before and those still with
us. He does not write in pain and loss,
harm and death without tasting it himself.
He does not call us to walk where He has not gone or will not go. And in the harshness of life, there is
glory. Such a weight of glory that we
need to read every word of every page to soak in every ounce of its richness.
The
glories of Christ have come, are here, and are yet to come. Hope in God keeps us going and keeps us
turning pages. We want to know if everything
will turn out all right. Yet in our desperate
times, we want to rush through the difficult parts and skip to the end, where everything
will resolve. But the stories of our
lives are not yet over; there are no final details written down on the last
pages of our journey. And what gets even
better is that our story is not only a part of the greatest story ever told, it
is a story that has no end.
His world, His realm, will have no
end. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the
First and the Last. The King of all
Kings interrupting time and history to come as a man, illuminating God’s
glorious plan to save a people for Himself.
A people who will live with Him in a world without end.
~Your Fellow Sojourner
“For to
us a child is born,
to us a
son is given;
and the
government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his
name shall be called
Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the
increase of his government and of peace
there
will be no end,
on the
throne of David and over his kingdom,
to
establish it and to uphold it
with
justice and with righteousness
from this
time forth and forevermore.
The zeal
of the LORD of hosts
will do this.”
Isaiah 7:6-7
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