UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Story Teller—UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

 

As a writer, I have found that the ending is hardest, whether it be a sermon, or a short story, or a novel, or even this column. I think that is because there is only one story, and it has no end.

As writers, we think there has to be a conclusion. Or, just because we’ve run out of time or pages, we go ahead and provide an ending, a conclusion, that often does not belong there.

We do that with relationships, with society, with…

One of the worst novels I ever read--an early effort by a now famous author…  It was so good for about 380 pages. There were a dozen interesting sub-plots. I was eager to see how each one got resolved. At the end, though, the narrating character is sitting on his back porch and says something like, “I realized that I would never know who killed the preacher, and what happened to the baby, and if the building burned down, and where the treasure was hidden…”

What do you mean you don’t know? You’re the author! That’s unfair. If you raise the expectation of a conclusion, you need to provide one.

The cross was not the end of the Jesus story. Neither is the resurrection. That’s why we keep saying, “Christ will come again.” There won’t be an end to the story until that happens.

But we like conclusions. We want conclusions. We don’t like this open-ended non-ending. When I get frustrated with the ending problem, I go to Natalie Sleeth’s great “Hymn of Promise,” especially the way she writes the last verse…

In our end is our beginning;

In our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing;

In our life, eternity;

In our death, a resurrection;

At the end, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season,

Something God alone can see.

 

John Robert McFarland