The Story Isn't Over Yet

"It's Friday... But Sunday's coming!"

The message of the past two years of my life has been "The story isn't over yet."

Maybe this has been the message for *all* of my life.  Because how many times have I thought I'd come to the end?

Thinking nothing good was ever going to happen again.

The present so dismal and dark that the light of the of the future just couldn't penetrate.

I'm so serious, that way.  I always have been this way.  I don't see the world with rose-colored glasses and I sure wish I could.

It's been job losses and baby losses.  It's been Wall Street failing and the outcome of elections.  It's been having babies and raising babies.  It's been standing still and it's been moving.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about the depression (and I hate to admit that's what it was) that I had been in since we moved three and half years ago.  I was at the place of dreading each day, waking up to the same discouraging circumstances, the same loneliness, the same old story.  And I wrote about how I decided it was time to live again.

And the Lord was whispering "The story isn't over yet, girl." (And HE is the only one who can call me "girl". Cause he says it with such love and sweetness.)

And my story wasn't over yet. It isn't over yet. Why, we've just had a baby, so hasn't it, in some ways, just begun again?

But this week, as I have sat on my bed pondering, and as I have sat on my nursing couch, mulling, again, this voice, that lying voice, whispers, "This is it.  There is no more.  Things will never change."

And I wanted to cry.  Such a heaviness on my heart when I listened to that voice.  But thank God, I've got HIS voice.  It straightens things out, it makes all things new.

In my heart, maybe not even in my head, I think I asked God for the truth.  And this is what He said. And, oh, He is the sweetest.

"Remember not the former things;

nor consider the things of old.

BEHOLD, I am doing a NEW thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert."

Isaiah 43:18 and 19

I came bounding down the stairs, thinking these words, this promise, over, and He said it again.

"The story isn't over yet."

And isn't that the message of Easter?

Think of it.  The disciples, they have lost their Teacher, Master, the one they dared to believe was Messiah.  The women, they have lost their Hero, their tender Rabboni.  All they had dared to hope in Him, and believe about Him, all the love in their hearts for Him, and He was now dead. In the tomb.  No doubt about it, cause they watched him beaten and literally torn apart. They watched him dragged off the cross and tossed into the cave haphazardly,  They saw the stone no one could move rolled into its place, sealing the grave.

It was over.

The two men on the way to Emmaus from Jerusalem, they just trudged along despondently.  Along came another traveller who asked why they were so sad.  "We had hoped he was the one..." they said.

And Peter and Andrew, James and John, what else was there to do but go back to their fishing gig?  The one they had given the last three years of their lives too, he was gone.  Dead.

 It was over.

No hope for tomorrow.

But the traveller on the road to Emmaus was Jesus, come back from the dead.

The one calling to the fishermen from the shore was Jesus,  risen from the grave.

He showed his hands and his feet.  Yes, that part of the story had been real,  But so was this.  He was alive!  Death could not hold him down.  There was no power stronger than him.

And there is much more to the story.  The book of Acts, the story of the disciples afterward, that is only the beginning!

What it is I long for in the pages of my life, I cannot even say.  All I know is, my heart cries for "More!" and it has pleaded for this for so long, and the promises seem so far off at times, that I despair.  But then Jesus appears to me and renews my hope.

"The story isn't over yet, girl."

There is this old hymn I used to love to sing in my growing-up days.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.

Because He lives, all fear is gone.

Because I know He holds the future.

Life is worth the living just because He lives.

This is the Easter story. HE LIVES!

And because HE LIVES, though there is death and sorrow, there is also life and joy.  And so long as I live, there is a story unfolding.  It is not over, nor will it be, until my own glorious resurrection, from earth to heaven.

And even then, my story just begins.

"May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Romans 15:13

Happy Easter!