I reread the Chronicles of Narnia every single year.
Yes, I am an adult. Yes, they still capture my heart and mind with every single time.
I know how the series ends. I’ve read through it more than a dozen times.
But every time I get to the final book – The Last Battle – I flip to the last page.
“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.
But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, p. 228)
I know how it ends – but I want to know again.
Have you ever flipped to the last page of a book because you simply couldn’t wait to see how it ended? Everything changes when you know the end of the story.
I wish I could flip forward. I wish I knew where I’d be in twenty years. I wish I knew what I’d be doing. I wish I knew if what I was doing now mattered.
I wish I knew the friends I’d still have. I wish I knew what my nieces and nephews would grow up to be.
There’s a lot I wish I knew – and a lot I don’t.
I do know the end of the story, though.
God has written the last page of history. We know how the story ends for those that follow Jesus. In the end, God wins. In the end, there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more heartache. In the end, He will make all things new.
How different would life be if only we remembered the end of the story? How would you think about your past? How would you trust in your present? How would you hope for the future?
Everything changes—or should change—when you know the end of the story.
Have you changed?