God of Endings
"He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.'" (Revelation 21:6 NIV)
Whenever someone suggests a movie to me, I always ask, "Does it have a happy ending?"
I know this isn't how real life works, of course. Real life has many endings that cannot under any circumstances be considered "happy." But that's the point: I don't usually watch a movie to watch real life, so I prefer a happy ending, if you don't mind.
Off-screen, though, death is perhaps the most final ending of all, and it is heart-wrenching and heart-breaking when it brings an end not only to an earthly life, but also to life as we, the still-living, know it—and, more to the point, life as we want it.
Yet God.
Through the writer of Ecclesiastes, God tells us that there is a time to die. And through His own names, He tells us that there is a time for endings.
He is the Alpha...but He is also the Omega.
He is the Beginning...but He is also the End.
If there were no need of endings, God Himself would not be the End.
We see death and endings with our finite earthly eyes, and God understands this. His great heart breaks for our broken hearts. But with his infinite, divine vision, God sees what death births and what endings begin.
King Uzziah's death gave birth to Isaiah seeing the Lord.
Lazarus' death gave birth to God's glory being more greatly revealed.
The end of the Old Covenant gave birth to the beginning of the New Promise.
Doesn't death during one season often lead to the birth of new life in the next? Doesn't an ending during one season often make way for a new beginning in the next?
Oh, dear ones, this is why God in His perfect wisdom appoints cyclical seasons. He is always doing something new. But sometimes He ends the old first.
How fitting it is that Jesus—the Beginning and the End—provides us with the most glorious example ever of an ending and a beginning, of a time to die and a time to be born. With the end of His earthly life, our hope for eternal life began, and with His triumph over earthly death, our hope for eternal life was born.
"You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live" (John 11:25 MSG).
No comments:
Post a Comment
I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to tell me what you really think. Years ago, I explained to my then-two-year-old that my appointment with a counselor was "sort of like going to a doctor who will help me be a better mommy." Without blinking, she replied, "You'd better go every day." All of which is just to say I've spent some time in the school of brutal honesty!