The End of the Story

My almost-8-year-old is a read-the-last-page-of-the-story guy.  I am not quite sure how it happened.  To my way of thinking, that is just wrong.

Except...

Sometimes I peek...not to read the whole page, but just to see if a certain name is mentioned, so I know if that character makes it through whatever their trial is.

Don't you wish you could do that with the story of your life?  Just take a quick peek to see how things work out?

God has His reasons, I know, for not telling us the end of the story here on earth.  And now I think I know why...or at least have a better understand.

I am a talker.  (You may be surprised at that...not.)  Sometimes, in order to work things out, I like to talk them through out loud.  I used to do it to Keith all the time.

After Keith died, I would still have these out-loud conversations, using the boys as a sounding board in the same way.

But it did not have quite the same results.

I would talk through out loud the planning for a particular day:  Maybe we will get up and run the errands, and then stop for lunch on the way home, and then start school...

The only problem was that the boys would get focused on the wrong part of the story:  Going out to lunch?!  We're going out to lunch?!  Yay!  Where are we going?  Can we go to _____?  (Insert boys who are now debating--loudly--the place we are going to for lunch.)

The boys would get totally focused on the wrong part of the story.  They took what was a maybe, a possible plan, and made it into reality--and started putting their own caveats into it.

Maybe that is why God does not give us--does not give me--that peek at the rest of the story.

I would get focused on the things ahead, and not take into consideration the things of now.  We are here for a purpose, and if I get caught up in the future too much, then I am not in my present, doing what I need to be doing in my present, putting my own spin on a future that may or may not be in my best interest...instead of trusting a Plan that is perfect.

So...I resolve to work through every page of my life...as it comes...and not worry about the ones that are too far ahead for me to see.  I will get there eventually...in God's good time, and with His good grace.

And if not...if His plan is not for me to walk the pages here on earth...then I get to the ultimate last page...eternal life with Him in Heaven.

I have already been told how the Big Story ends.

Amen and amen!

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. - Ephesians 2:10 (NASB)