Coming Clean

The End

Roger Said:
I notice that people always put “the end” last. Maybe you should write a little something about that…

The thing about “The End” is not so much that it is last as much as it is unfairly considered final.

Consider, for a moment, the word “Amen”. It ends just about every prayer you’ve ever heard. It’s the last word in the Bible. But when we reach it, we don’t just stand around blinking at each other waiting for the world to go black… we go on.

So it is with “The End”, and as such both “Amen” and “The End” get a bad reputation. They are the death knell for what came previously. The exposition, growth, and beauty that came before can no longer continue. You have to now close the book and move on with a kind of emptiness that nothing more will be of what lies on the pages.

But is it really so?

I think part of the hang up with “The End” (as well as “Amen” …and anything else conclusive) is the sense of dying that is projected by the thought. We have reached the terminating point, and what was is ceasing to go further. But that’s just a tad bit unfair, isn’t it?

“The End” should be seen as the culmination point – the point at which all that has been said must now be actualized in some sense. In stories of fiction, a moral should be considered from the story. In Scripture, the lessons should be further pondered and certainly lived. In life as we know it, our being will transcend into our immortal reality as God sees fit. The End is never truly an end at all, but an unknown beginning that continues and makes good of what came before.

So, while we all relish the intellectual engagement of a good book, a good life, or a good blog post, we should not fear, not be depressed, nor otherwise be let down by the end of it, but we should instead look forward to the good that has come from it and, more importantly, will proceed from it. If we do not carry it on into a new life, then the end is truly a terrifying thing.

How’s that, Roger?