The End of the Story

Do you have faith in the end of your story?

It is a critically important question for Jesus followers living in a broken world (that is all of us)! Why? Because each of us has been promised an eternity free from death, pain, and suffering (Rev. 21:4), and yet we live in a deeply broken world (our headline stories will, as they always do, reveal this brokenness).

Your future—the end of your story—is written. It is already accomplished, and it is one of wholeness, beauty, and rejoicing!

But your today—the middle part of your story—is being written amid brokenness. You have circumstances in your present day—in your here and now—that are anything but free from death, pain, and suffering.

So I ask again: As you live from the middle of your story in a place riddled with brokenness, do you have faith that the end of your story is still both whole and good?

You can, and you should, but if you are like me, you need reminded how to do so.

This week, our family is celebrating the life and memory of my wife, Brooke’s, mom—our beloved Mimi. You have walked this journey with us (we are so grateful for that), and it has been a vivid and painful reminder that the middle of your story and mine is anything but pain-free. In fact, the middle of the story includes significant struggle with pain, sickness, agony, heartache, and ultimately, death. There is every temptation to internalize these realities, and to allow them to write the overarching narrative of our lives.

In short, it is easy to lose faith in the end of the story.

Take a moment now to consider where this is most true in your life today. It likely took just that—the briefest of moments—for you to identify where it is you are tempted to lose the thread of your life’s ultimate narrative. Perhaps it is in a relationship with your spouse or your children or your parents. Maybe it is in an illness for you or a loved one. For some of you, it is in a struggle to find identity and purpose in your vocation or your livelihood. For others, you are walking through a season like our family—one marked by the loss of the human form of someone you love.

Whatever it is, that loss is real. You live in a tangible world. Ephesians 6:12 calls it a world of “flesh and blood,” and in the same breath reminds you that your struggle is not against that tangible world, but rather against spiritual forces that war against you. Your struggle is against a power who tells you that the end of your story is authored by the events that occur in the middle of your story.

It is a lie.

The Truth you can stand on today is that the Power in you is greater than the power who utters those lies (1 Jn. 4:4). The pain you are experiencing today is real, but it is not forever.

The end of your story is already written, and it is good! In the end of your story, you are whole. In fact, in the end, your story is full wrapped up in the Author’s story, and that is how you can be confident it is good!

So this week, let’s you and I walk this out together. Our family will shed some tears. It is very likely yours will too (and if not this week, soon—it is a reality of these middle chapters we are living). But they do not have to be tears without hope (1 Thes. 4:13). 

The end of your story is held and protected by the Most High God. You can have faith in it even as you walk through the most intense of suffering. Your God is good, and He is still writing your story!

The following article originally appeared in Thann’s “The Equipped” Weekly Newsletter. For more information on Thann’s weekly email, click here.