We all love happy endings.
Poets know this and so end their fairy tales with “and they lived happily ever after.” The great old cowboy movies often ended with the cowboy victoriously riding off into the purple sunset. Feel-good movies all have happy endings. We hear those happy endings, see those purple sunsets, and long for that in our life. The real secret of happiness is not in those purple sunsets, but in the chance to start over – to begin again.
• The prodigal son far from home, broke, and hungry, did the one thing he could. He went home. He started over. He began again.
• Hezekiah on his deathbed repents of his failures and starts over. God lets him begin again.
• Joseph sold into slavery, cast into prison, and forgotten by his friends, began again. It took two years, but instead of losing faith, he waited with patience. When his door to home was closed, he knew that some greater door would open (Gen 50:20).
In “The Land of Beginning Again,” L.F. Tarkington wrote,
I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again
Where all of our mistakes, and all of our heartaches,
And all of our poor, selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never be put on again.
At some time or another in our life, we all long for that land of beginning again “where all our mistakes” can “be dropped like a shabby old coat.”
In the end of this life, what we are promised is a new start. John, gazing into heaven, wrote, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1). Even eternity will be a chance to start over.
I love happy endings but a chance to start over is even better. Even death itself is just another start over.
Lonnie Davis