Surely I am with you always, to the very end. Matthew 28:20
When I read a book, I find myself visualizing each character – their appearance, their personality, their faults, their successes, their failures, and the components that make them tick. I begin to identify with the characters, and I certainly want things to turn out in their favor in the end. From my vantage point, I can see the mistakes they could make, the pain that awaits, and I want to help them avoid these.
This habit leads to the problem I sometimes have of the awful urge to skip to the end of the book to make sure I like the ending and that things turn out as they should for my characters. This is a horrible habit to have in almost any book, but especially when you are reading a story which has a twist at the end! You miss the whole idea.
There are many times when I also would like to skip to the end of a situation, a close ballgame, a movie, an illness, a life altering decision, and so many other things, but then I would miss the beauty which leads up to the end. I probably would have never read Gone With the Wind if I had known the way Rhett would leave Scarlett.
We all face challenges and difficulties in this life, and it’s easy to let our thoughts become negative. If we let those thoughts control our life, we are defeated before we ever begin to fight. If we are spiritually, emotionally, and mentally prepared, we don’t have to skip to the end because we can be sure that at the end of a great hardship lies an even greater blessing.
Mistakes are survivable, and they can become teaching tools to sharpen and make you a better person. Don’t skip to the end of life – just enjoy it!
Garth Brooks said it best in his song, The Dance. And now I’m glad I didn’t know the way it all would end, the way it all would go; Our lives are better left to chance – I could have missed the pain, but I’d have to miss the dance.