CONCLUSION
THE MAKER AND KEEPER OF PROMISES
Of course, some disappointments have their uses. The ruins of our own cherished plans often become the steps we take toward the true good that God has waiting for us. Some of the very things you hope for right now are what God in his great love wants to pry from your fingers so that you can receive what is better from him.
Paul learned that when he prayed three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh. God told Paul that his strength would be made perfect in Paul’s weakness. So Paul rejoiced to become weak for the glory of God.
And this is what we find in our own lives. When we cling to the world with all our might, we soon realize we cannot hold on. As Jesus said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). God has something even better than the whole world for his children.
When Every Chapter Is Better Than the Last
In the last paragraph of the last book of C. S. Lewis’s series The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis captures something of the nature of Christian hope. He writes:
And as Aslan spoke, he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.1
After considering the mysteries of God, his mercies to us in Christ, and the hope we have as his covenant children, Paul dissolves into doxology and says, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33).
Who Will Trust? Who Will Believe?
So I hope I have been clear: the point of the New Testament, indeed, the point of the whole Bible, is that God has made promises to us, he has kept those promises to us, and we are called to trust him because he is the keeper of promises! God has revealed himself to humanity through his promises.
And that is why faith is so important. At the end of the day, the Bible does not lie on the shelf like a passive object for us to investigate. At the end of the day, it turns and looks at us and asks, will you believe and trust? Or, as Lady Wisdom cries out in the book of Proverbs, “Who will trust? Who will follow? Who will believe what I say?”
God gives his Word and his promises to us. He calls us to trust his Word and to believe his promises. Adam and Eve did not believe in the garden of Eden. Jesus believed throughout his life, and particularly in the garden of Gethsemane. And as you and I hear and believe God’s Word, we are restored to the relationship with him for which we were made. This is the hope in which we can trust, because this hope will not disappoint. This is what the Bible—Old Testament and New—is all about.
1 C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier, 1956), 183.