The End In Mind

Sometimes we imagine ourselves the star of our own personal blockbuster biopic, currently in production (it’s sometimes in development hell, but generally moving forward) and it’s all vital and crucial, Academy Award-material, two thumbs way up.

God is teaching us all this stuff, we think, even if don’t presently know what it is. And if we can figure it out, then it will all not only make sense, but also be worth it.

We want it to “mean” something, and then all of it will be alright, all the dangers and challenges and sadness, and we’ll be “OK with it.”

Not only that, but maybe … we’re not sure, because we don’t presently know what it is … maybe it’s gonna be big! And we mean BIG.

Then it will mean something.

And maybe we’ll get famous.

As if it isn’t meaningful enough for God to just want to be with us, and want us to be with Him, and want us to want what He wants. Imagine! God wants to hang with … us. He wants you. He wants me.

But do we still get to be the star in that movie deal you mentioned?

We want to know, because then, you know, it’ll be … even better!!

And I’m the star so I get to direct, because who else could, knows as much about us as we do?

At least I can be petulant in my trailer if the Writer / Director won’t pay attention to us, right?

Which is a lot weird, because the thing we just turned down was Him paying attention to us.

*

So I realize there’s no film.

So I say, “Then there is no purpose?”

If there’s no big production, what’s the point?

*

And that’s when I realize there’s also no defined end to the drama undeniably being played out in my life. It’s not a blockbuster biopic starring me, but something is going on. And here we mean when it’s not fun, because we were just looking for the meaning. And part of how there would be meaning is if I’m in charge, but if not I still want to know there’s an end, and I get the girl, find the money, and save my friends, family, town, world.

*

So bottom line, here’s my fear:

There’s apparently nothing that explains and justifies the pain,

and

There’s no foreseeable end to that pain, my fame waiting or not.

But if the first part is about being with God, why do I care when it ends?

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Inglorious Bastards

This is a post borne of a recent article in Leadership Journal, by a guy who’s been meeting with Ted Haggard. I don’t usually write on stuff like that — it is cheeseball to even appear to piggyback for one’s own benefit on somebody else’s popular post, or to try and capitalize on an au

Read More »

Lipstick

Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action

Read More »

People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

Read More »

One Day One

The birds start by 0315 here, which is when I awoke this morning. They didn’t do it, make me wake-up, they’re not roosters after all, but it was odd, since in summer-coming season — the annual-but-always-unexpected late Spring overcast SoCal days with weather-people broadcasting [good weather word!] ‘plenty of heat on its way’, or the

Read More »

Related

Pieta

I don’t think next year will be so different from this year. Which after all was not so different from the one before. But I think you can be different from last year and I can. Which after all may be true for you as it was also for me.

Read More »

All Hat No Cattle

The men I respected most when I wrote about the golf business — and being the golf business they were mostly men — were course superintendents. I loved talking with them, because they more than nearly anyone else wanted to be there simply for the grass and the golfers, and in that order. And this

Read More »

Inconvenient Truth

Near the start of The Shawshank Redemption Andy Dufresne is on the witness stand, losing a battle for his life he will ultimately win. The district attorney calls “inconvenient” the inability to find the gun used in the crime. Andy has used the gun to make a hole in the river, though not to make

Read More »