life on planet earth on Endings

Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something's time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a...

J. R. R. Tolkien coined the term "eucatastrophe" to refer to the unexpected happy ending at the end of a fairy tale, achieved by grace rather than effort. The consolation of fairy-stories,...

An ending can be either good or bad. There are excellent novels that held my attention and moved me for hundreds of pages only to end in a way that made me regret reading the story. Sadly, the same ca...

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

But Jesus spoke to me all that I needed to understand, and here is what he said, “Sin has a part to play in my plan, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well...

If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings qui...

In his book Surprise Endings, Ron Mehl recounted a story about a seventy-eight-year-old minister who was hired by a church in California. Not long after his arrival, the church members began to compla...

God of grace, love, and hope: Your grace comes when we least expect and don’t deserve it. Your love comes when we can’t comprehend why but we need it the most. Your hope comes at just the right time t...

It is characteristic of any great work of literature to have in its ending something that brings a sense of harmony to the whole. Like the finale of a symphony, or the confetti at the end of a nationa...

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see ...

Things are not ends in themselves; they are means to greater attachment to others. . . . But to have a good relationship with others, it is necessary to have a proper relationship with things.

And so we arrive at autumn, the conclusion of our ordinary time in the land. The seeds planted at the start of our pilgrimage have produced a harvest in fields, homes, and towns. Farms display God’s a...

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

My wife, Ruth…was one of those who could lighten heavy hearts, especially mine. I will never forget when she announced what she wanted engraved on her gravestone, and for those who have so respectfull...

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of t...

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we ...

Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The pos...

The mouth filled with real laughter…is an image representing the end of days, the overcoming of separateness and closure. In this world, it remains a mere possibility that constantly destroys itself.

I saw a live podcast a few weeks ago, and the host, actor Dax Shepherd, gave the audience a couple minutes to ask questions. One young woman in the front row asked him, “How do you get through the har...

At the end of the day, honoring God leads to good things. Anything else leads to confusion, emotional exhaustion and a lack of good things.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...

The marvellous thing about learning from a story is that a story never ends, so our learning from it need not end either. p.98.

“Why our son?” are the only words you can muster. The funeral is over and the words of comfort have been politely said. Now it is just you, your memories, and your question, “Why me?” “The tests were...

At their core, transitions are the internal adjustments by which we reorient ourselves to new environments, new experiences, and new seasons of life.

At crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over.