A Happy Ending

A story is only as good as its ending. Without a happy ending that draws us on in eager anticipation, our journey becomes a nightmare of endless struggle. Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets? On a recent flight I was chatting with one of the attendants about her spiritual beliefs. A follower of a New Age guru, she said with all earnestness, “I don’t believe in heaven. I believe life is a never-ending cycle of birth and death.” What a horror, I thought to myself. This Story had better have a happy ending. Paul felt the same. If this is as good as it gets, he said, you may as well stop at a bar on the way home and tie one on; go to Nordstrom’s and max out all your credit cards; bake a cake and eat the whole thing. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).

Our hearts cannot live without hope. Gabriel Marcel says that “hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism.” In the trinity of Christian graces — faith, hope, and love — love may be the greatest, but hope plays the deciding role. The apostle Paul tells us that faith and love depend on hope, our anticipation of what lies ahead: “Faith and love ... spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:5). Our courage for the journey so often falters because we’ve lost our hope of heaven — the consummation of our Love Story. The reason most men, to quote Thoreau, “live lives of quiet desperation” is that they live without hope.

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