The last page.

I got my love of literature from my Mom.  Between my birth and when my sister started elementary school, she was a full time homemaker and most days as kids that involved (among many other things) her reading to us.  She introduced me to Anne of Green Gables, Aslan, The Little Engine that Could and Peter Rabbit, among many others.

Later, when she was the head librarian in both my school library and church library, she would look the other way when I snuck first peaks at the new books that came in.  She would even hold off on processing them until my bookmark had migrated to the back of it (which seldom took longer than a day or two).  We would then have conversations about the latest Gordon Korman or Ted Dekker book where we compared our takes on the humour level and worldview being presented.

However, as much as I could relate to her love of literature, there was one book reading habit of hers that I just could not understand.  Pretty much every time she really got into a fiction book, she would read the last chapter before she was even half way through.  I used to laugh at her and point out how she was missing out on the suspense and wonder of not knowing how things would end.

However, more recently I’ve been second guessing if that is really true.  Since I’ve started experiencing “life to the full” with all the ups and downs that go with it – I think that the thing that has really given me the optimism necessary for pushing on at times is that fact that Scriptures have given me a glimpse of the last chapter.  I don’t know all the details of how Christ will work everything to the good, but I do know that He will conquer evil, He will prevail.

And knowing that everything will turn out in the end really does help when you’re in the midst of what seems to be a twist in the story heading in the wrong direction.

So Mom, I guess I can understand, a little bit, why you do it.  All the same, thanks for raising me in a way where seeing His love modeled so fully made my growing up years safe enough for me to scoff at the need of know the end 🙂

Rusty.

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If you are in a place where a reminder that evil in your life will lose could be useful.  Feel free to comment below and myself and others will be praying for you.