The End of the Story

            I need to keep reminding myself that I know the end of the story.  When you read the Bible the beginning starts out so amazingly and it quickly goes downhill.  By the sixth chapter, God has to flood the entire universe.  The all-time low is when God is crucified and is laid in the grave.  That was literally and figuratively hitting rock bottom.

            You’ve got to read all the way until the end to know the end of the story.  If you read it from beginning to end, you will see Revelation as the ultimate in God’s love poured out over the entire universe. 

            I have to admit that it took me a while to read Revelation that way.  In fact, though I have been reading the Bible from beginning to end since I was 16, I never read Revelation until I was in my late thirties.  Frankly, it scared me.  I didn’t want to know the end of the story.  I worked on digesting the rest of the Bible.

Before the year 2000, a friend was teaching Precepts three-year study of Revelation.  I decided if Y2K was bringing on what was written in Revelation, I had better learn what it was all about.  I discovered that Revelation was not written so that we would chew our fingernails in anxiety and fear; rather it was given to open our hearts, minds and spirits to the wonder of our amazing God who has plans to do more than we can ask or think!  Revelation wasn’t written so we could come up with some timetable of end times; rather it was written so we can grow to the place where, like the angels, we will see what is happening on the earth and be able to say with them Great and marvelous are your deeds,

Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
King of the nations.
Who will not fear you, Lord,
and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed. (Revelation 15:3-4)

Now I’m glad because I know the end of the story.  I may not see it with my eyes or experience it in my circumstances, but I can trust God in my present distress because I know that one day I will see it like the angels see God’s actions in the universe He created.  What I can cling to now is that every action that God has taken from the beginning to the end of the story and has come from utter and complete love for me and His entire universe—including mosquitos. 

He wrote the end of the story, and I can’t wait to get there.  Because I know the end is going to be amazing, I will wait and live in expectation that it will be better than I imagined in my limitedness.

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