I do not call you Unfortunate

We always hear that if we just trust God, he is working all things together for good, that eventually, things will get better, that this too must pass, that everything will be alright eventually.

But supposing things aren’t?

What if I keep praying, and God keeps saying no? What if I keep needing miracles, and none ever come? What if I keep faithfully serving God, no matter what happens, and things just keep getting worse and worse? What if, like Job, I lose everything, but unlike Job, I never get any of it back? What if the end of the story is me, with everyone I loved dead and everything I owned gone, with my body broken and my mind half-mad, still waiting on God to act?* What then?

Last night, I popped in the DVD of one of my favorite movies. It starts off, as you might expect, with looming danger on the horizon for our heroes, danger that comes closer and closer as the story goes on. They’re brave and smart and strong, and they try everything they can think of to avoid it, but all their efforts are in vain. Just when they think they’ve escaped, danger comes at them from another corner. As the disc ends, some of the heroes are dead, the others are about to be dead, the promises and prophecies are unfulfilled, and all of it was for nothing.

This seems like it should be a really lousy movie. Why is it one of my favorites? Because this is the extended edition, and if you wait just a few seconds after the screen goes black, there is a little script that says, “the story continues on the next disc…” And you see, I know what happens on the next disc. The prophecies come true; the promises are fulfilled; the heroes are saved; the victory is won. It all turns out to be worth it in the end.

I have watched movies where this was not the case. In middle school I watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a film about the son of a Nazi concentration camp commander who befriends a boy from the camp. He sneaks into the camp with his friend. As his parents frantically search for him, the boys are rounded up, told to take off their clothes, and herded into a gas chamber. The camera zooms out on the discarded clothing, and the screen goes black. And that’s it – end of story.

The first time I watched it, I couldn’t believe that was the end. But it was. Because in this life, things don’t get tied up in a neat bow. Help doesn’t always arrive in time. The fight isn’t always worth it. The heroes don’t always win. The promises aren’t always fulfilled. What’s lost isn’t always recovered. What’s broken isn’t always healed. Things don’t always get better. This life can end in sorrow, pain, humiliation, and injustice.

But this is only the first life. If you look just past the fade to black, the story continues in the next life – and the rest of the story makes it all worthwhile.

The Horse and His Boy tells the story of Shasta, an orphan who washes up on a beach and is found by a man who treats him like slave labor and then prepares to sell him to a cruel warlord. But Shasta escape and begins a long, hard, danger-rife journey toward Narnia in the North. As the end of the book nears, he is tired, weary, and frightened. Every time he finishes one task, there is another to be done. He explains all this to a mysterious Voice he meets on his journey, exclaiming, “Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world.”

And the Voice says, “I do not call you unfortunate.”

The Voice, you see, has been guiding Shasta’s path all along. He knows this is an adventure story, and he knows that Shasta is on the brink of the ending that will make everything worth it. It was only recently that I understand C.S. Lewis was talking about all of human life when he described Shasta’s troubles. In this life, we are told, there will be tribulation. But God doesn’t call us unfortunate. He calls us blessed. He knows the rest of the story. “Be of good cheer!” he says. “I have overcome the world.”

Everyone likes quoting the first part of Hebrews 11, the “Hall of Fame” of faith. I memorized it when I was little; it’s an exhilarating passage, listing victory after victory until it crescendos into tales of those:

who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.

Without pausing, the author goes on.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better…

God does not call them unfortunate. And guess what the theme of the very next chapter of Hebrews is? It’s the passage about running with endurance and not growing weary that I wrote about a few weeks ago. We keep going, even when things get hard and there’s no release in sight, that we might rise again to a better life.

So if, like me, you tend to get up in the morning and immediately groan at the thought of your to-do list, perhaps you can join me in beginning the day by telling yourself, “I do not call you unfortunate. God has prepared something better.”

*If this seems a little melodramatic, consider, for instance, the women currently being held by Boko Haram. And if, considering that, this blog seems trite and unconvincing, consider that the early church faced the same threat of dislocation, maltreatment, and death; this was something Christianity confronted from the very beginning. It is only the modern West that has momentarily forgotten it.

Photo from Chronicles of Narnia film series.