Not Content With Tragedy

We spend our lives standing watch. Day and night we patrol the walls we build around ourselves, searching the horizon for any sign of danger, any threat to the lives we’ve made. Carefully we guard against the enemies of our happiness: against loneliness and rejection, poverty, failure, and dissatisfaction. At the first sign of trouble approaching, we leap into action to save our treasured selves, to keep the lights burning and the bills paid, to protect the precious lives we have so carefully assembled.

But the devastating truth is that sooner or later, something slips by our careful watch. Sickness steals in through an open window. Violence breaks down the gate we barred against mortality. The years themselves rise up like a wave and crush us with the weight of age. At the end, we finally understand what Solomon knew: that all our watchfulness was for nothing.

Solomon’s words cannot be denied by mortals such as we are. They are true in all their desolation. Every story is a tragedy if you follow it long enough, for every story ends with the death of every character.

But the Author of Life is not content with a tragic ending for his creation. Jesus comes down to us and is the Word, the new word, written across the great blankness of death we thought was the end of our story. He writes it in his own blood, the new ending we find in the book of Revelation: “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” For in the new order of things, there are no endings, only the eternal telling of the endless story of his love for us.

Respond in Prayer

Lord God, You knew us before we were born and will receive us when our bodies die. Be near to me today that I might live as you would have me live, bringing glory to you and healing to your world. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Michael Bonikowsky