It was okay for the language, but French writers seem to have a love for stories that end badly. The hero dies or it doesn’t all work out at the end. Ambiguity rules.
I had a hard time with that because I’m a big fan of happy endings. I don’t spend hours reading a book in order to have more questions at the end than at the beginning.
Give me an old Western any day. There’s a good guy, a bad guy and a pretty girl. You got that? The black hat and the white hat spend the whole film fighting, then at the end the good guy plugs the bad guy, takes the pretty girl by the hand, they climb on their horses and they ride off towards the setting sun to live happily ever after.
It’s not complicated.
Those Westerns starring John Wayne were some of the best. There’s the Duke in the fort, dressed in his Calvary uniform, surrounded by 10 million Indians. They whoop and yell as they ride by the wall of the fort so that the three soldiers left alive can have target practice.
Big John has an arrow through his hat, another protruding from his shoulder and a bullet in his leg. The beautiful girl has a worried look on her face. “Well, it looks like our number has finally come up,” he says to her.
Just as the Indians seem poised to scale the walls and kill our hero and his girlfriend, a trumpet sounds in the distance, “Doo, doo, tee da, tee do!” And here comes the Seventh Calvary to the rescue as the Indians scatter likes ants do when I stomp on them when they’re trying to steal my sandwich at a picnic.
Foiled again! Chalk up another for the good guys.
I wonder if God didn’t put something in the DNA of man which loves stories like that. We want to believe that the good guys win in the end (the Indians might have a slightly different perspective of who the good guys are but that’s to consider another day). We want justice to prevail.
Injustice Hurts God, Too
When you wrote with your suggestions for Coffee Stains topics, justice was well-represented. We wonder why wrong seems to win and we ask ourselves why God doesn’t do something. It hurts to see young ladies sold into sexual slavery, or children abused by predators. We scream inside when we see someone taking unfair advantage of us or our family.
And sometimes we see ourselves hurting others and that drives a knife in our heart.
We turn towards God and whisper, “why?”
Would it surprise you to know that all these injustices, lies, and pain in the earth also hurt God’s heart? He longs to return the world to the default setting of justice it had in the beginning we He created it.
That was before man decided to rebel against God and disobey and injustice charged into the world like a hungry wolf.
Perhaps it won’t lessen the pain of right now, but there is coming a day when God finally gets fed up and He makes an end of wrong. Flash forward into the future with me. A horrible battle looms. Those who love God are surrounded by armies representing every nation of the earth. It looks like injustice will finally prevail … when suddenly a trumpet sounds!
What John Saw
“Then I saw Heaven wide open, and before my eyes appeared a white horse, whose rider is called faithful and true, for his judgment and his warfare are just. His eyes are a flame of fire and there are many diadems upon his head. There is a name written upon him, known only to himself. He is dressed in a cloak dipped in blood, and the name by which he is known is the Word of God.
“The armies of Heaven follow him, riding upon white horses and clad in white and spotless linen. Out of his mouth there comes a sharp sword with which to strike the nations. ‘He will rule them with a rod of iron’, and alone he will tread the winepress of the furious wrath of God the Almighty. Written upon his cloak and upon his thigh is the name, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Rev. 19:11-16, J.B. Phillips)
In case you didn’t catch it, the rider on the white horse is the Lord Jesus.
God works to right wrongs, even down here. But, there is coming a Day when everything will be set right. Hang onto the Lord. He hasn’t forgotten.
picture by Moyan Brenn on Flickr
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Hmmm …
“The joy of being right is short-lived. The joy of peace lasts a lifetime.” -Skip Prichard
Someone said, “At the age of twenty we have the face that nature gave us. At fifty we have the face we deserve.”
Got a Minute? Check out this podcast I did …
Marriage Proposals
How many of you ladies would like a wedding proposal like this? “I want you to be my wife for now and eternity. I’ll be faithful to you. I’ll never again go out with other women–not more than once or twice a month anyway. I’ll take care of you. I’ll work steadily two weeks out of four each month.
“I’ll help you with the kids, if I don’t have anything else to do.”