Endings

by Janine Anderson

I hate endings. I'm bad at them—horrible actually. Beginnings, now there's something I can sink my teeth into. Beginnings are beautiful, fresh, teeming with life and possibility. Middles are for obedient muddling, the holding patterns of the "known," but endings…Endings are unnatural, awkward, painful and downright wrong.

Think about it. You only want something to end when it's undesirable. We long for bad things to end. But, we long for the good things in life to never end, and when they do we experience loss.

Actually, I don't know that endings were part of the original design. I think they are largely a consequence of the fall. The original breaking of perfect, trusting fellowship with the Father was the first and worst ending, and we feel the ripple effects throughout our consequently broken pilgrimage.

I'm not even a fan of the so-called good endings, like having just earned my Master's degree. I find myself grieving the loss of classes and classmates, lectures and papers, reading and learning in semester-long rhythms—that whole school-student- professor-campus thing. I will miss it.

I long to accomplish the goal without losing the season. I long not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But the baby has graduated, and full-time work she must. So, school ends, a beloved season passes, as all things flesh and fallen are wont to do. But, we carry this eternity in our hearts that nothing good should end, that there's a wrongness about endings that eternal beings were not designed for.

And good endings like graduating are just the tip of the ending-iceberg. There's the end of a cherished friendship, the end of a romantic relationship, and the mother of all endings—DEATH.

Enter Jesus: Jesus ultimately silenced the bitterness of endings when He hung there and died, saying, "It is finished." It is finished. All death and endings are swallowed up by life, and even the endings we so desperately experience are somehow wrapped into His finished work that we walk out and work out in our anguished and fallen, yet redeemed state.

Finishing is very different from ending. I daresay that finishing is an opposite of ending. And while often listed as synonyms, even Webster makes a clear distinction: "the end" is the limit or conclusion, whereas, "to finish" is to complete or perfect.

Finishing a paper or a project garners the sweet fulfillment of accomplishment, as does any job well done. Fine wines are described as having, "a crisp, clean, finish," not a crisp, clean ending. No one would dare disgrace the finish line of a race, by calling it the "ending line."

And yet, the end of Jesus' life on earth signaled the beginning of our hope against death and endings. By His crucifixion, Jesus plays a cruel trick on death making it His instrument to bring about true life. He turns all endings into mini-death surrenders to His life-giving Lordship, because it is indeed finished. And we rise with Him in His resurrection life, of using even us in His global mission of putting things to rights.

"Death, you have no more sting!" Someday, all will be rightfully eternal; the fullest fullness will be fully realized. For now, we groan purposefully; hopeful and confident in His finished work that puts all endings to death, and rights all that is wrong—gradually, patiently, eventually.

May your endings of all kinds draw you closer to Him because of His loving, life-giving sacrifice, as you follow Him into the good fight, finishing your course, and keeping the faith in His end without end. Amen.