“But In The End”

Been through the fire in life?

Everything that was valuable to you was lost in the flames?

I have.

Been through the flood?

Feels like everything was flooded out and washed away?

Me too as well.

This is hard for me to write today.

I, like anyone else, grow weary in testing.

You may agree.

 It seems like it will never end.

It appears that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Only to discover it is the headlight from another oncoming train.

And it is about to hit you.

Again.

Personally?

I want to go from pauper to plenty.

From nothing to never ending.

I want to have plenty of resources so that the people I can help is never ending.

By the way, when I speak of loss, I am not speaking of just material wealth.

That can be replaced.

It may take a while, but if it meant a lot to you, it can be replaced.

I once had someone tell me, “I don’t mean this in a hurtful way.  But for all you have been through, you sure do not have much to show for it.”

They were right.

Pretty much everything was gone.

But, as I said to them, “Value is not found in finding our belongings.  Value is found in finding where we belong.”

So where does that bring me, or any of us, today?

Burned out?

Flooded out?

We are only in the beginning, or for some of us, in the middle of this journey.

Fortunately, for us, there is a unique phrase used throughout literature.

“But in the end…”

What happens in the end?

Do you look back and wonder how all of this could have happened?

Or.

Do you refuse to look back and wonder, but in the end, how all of this could have happened anyway?

Almost the same question but certainly not the same ending.

Charles Spurgeon describes the journey in this manner, in his commentary on Psalm 66, where the thought for this entry originated.

“The path of sorrow and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

Where sorrow is unknown.

Sounds like a great place doesn’t it?

Maybe that is why the “survivor” of Psalm 66 wrote this, “We went through fire and flood.  But in the end, you brought us into wealth and great abundance.”

Notice I used the word, “survivor”, not the “writer” of Psalm 66.

To use the term “writer” means that one is writing, possibly, about someone else’s experience.

To use the term “survivor”, is to say, “I experienced these things, but in the end, lived to tell of it!”

A survivor will never lie.

If you have not experienced the fire and the flood?

You will.

If you are trying to survive the current fire and flood?

 You can.

If you have gone through the fire and the flood?

 Then you can look forward to the end.

Not the end of life.

But the end of the fire and the flood.

And what comes after.

The loss is worth the gain.

The fire and the flood can never, never, stop a person of hope.

Hope is how you survived the fire and the flood.

In the end, it is hope that will make all that was lost, worth it.

“We went through fire and flood.  But in the end, you brought us into wealth and great abundance.”

John