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Your email address will not be published.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

Finding Level

Relationship finds its own level. Generally it looks like we [and others] choose — a boy’s entreatment rejected, an attorney makes partner, 158 million of us vote — but there is a finality to much that we ostensibly do. This is how such absurdities as determinism gain purchase, how authors can talk and be misunderstood

Read More »

The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

Read More »

Old Flannery Coat

The porch steps were slick with rain this morning, and I realized I knew people whose first reaction to someone slipping on them would not be sadness — let alone to help — but rather to laugh. These are the sociopaths-in-training. These are the men and women I pray get their asses kicked like Al

Read More »

Related

Lyric Lent

Mostly I gave up meat for Lent. Or to put it another way, I gave up meat (mostly) for Lent. And this is how Lent often goes and the difference I think isn’t usually that it doesn’t go that way but that it’s OK when it does. Not that it’s OK to give our word

Read More »

Metered Sins

Poetry’s a sneaky bastard. All the time sidling up to one on false pretenses — ‘It’s just the one’ … ‘We won’t intrude’ — and they’re all lies damn one’s eyes! Lies-damned-lies and no need for statistics and the pile of warm laundry does not diminish and soon loses its warmth and begins to glower

Read More »

One Question, Two Answers

How to be really great Your life will be immeasurably great — incalculably awesome — if you put others in place of … you.  We will be great if we put others before us.  That is, if we put them first. One week at church, a pastor culled some points from a book on Christian

Read More »

Make No Mistake

When I played baseball in 10th grade, our coach was forever admonishing us to Give 110% — often prefaced by a forlorn C’mon fellas … [In 11th grade, the coach would line us up against the chain link fence in front of the dugout and hit baseballs at us. He said this was to train our

Read More »