Volume 28, No. 1                                                       
January 5, 2003

Finished

   Talk about a novel ending!

   When author Stephen King was an unknown, 24-year-old high school teacher living in a rented trailer with his wife and two kids, he sold short stories to magazines, just to make ends meet. One of the pieces was especially hard to write. King considered the story “too realistic” and it dealt with “the world of girls”, which he didn’t know anything about.  Over and over, he tried to wrestle the words onto the page, but the story wouldn’t gel.  Disgusted with the first eight pages he’d written, he threw them out.

   That night, King’s wife Tabitha saw the crumpled papers while collecting the trash. Curious, she read the incomplete story.  Seeing its potential immediately, she insisted her husband finish it.  “I told her it was too long for the markets I’d been selling to,” says King, “and that it might turn out to be a short novel.  She said, ‘Just write it.’  I protested that I knew almost nothing about girls.  She said, ‘I do.  I’ll help you.’  She did. And for the last 28 years, she has.”

   When King did finish the book, Doubleday was willing to pay only a $2,500 advance, unsure of how readers would react to the material.  The publisher needn’t have worried.  Carrie became a national best-seller and a hit movie.  The author says, “The book’s reception floored everyone, I think — except my wife.”

   There’s another King who rescues unfinished stories from the trash, which is where many of us throw our lives when we don’t like what we’ve written, can’t make things go the way we want, or see any prospect of a tidy ending. Just when it seems nobody knows or cares about the struggles we’ve endured, Jesus stoops to salvage our crumpled dreams.  He gently smoothes the scrunched and crinkled \remnants of our abandoned hopes and sees beyond the sometimes anguished attempts we’ve made to make sense of the world and our place in it. He isn’t phased by the false starts, the lines and relationships begun then crossed out, or the abrupt endings that betray our confusion and frustration.  Though our efforts are weak and messy, He believes in us.  He sees the potential that lies just past our fatigue and defeat.

   When we’re willing, He hands back our life and says, “Finish the story.”   We often try to tell him there’s no use, no point, and no interest on the part of those around us, but He won’t be dissuaded.  “Just write it,” He says quietly.

   “But I know almost nothing about godliness,” we protest.  “I do,” He replies.  “I’ll help you.”   And He does.  And He will.

   God wants us to tell the story of how, each day, we find rescue and redemption in the Good News of how Jesus takes away our sins and gives us power for living. “It’s changing lives everywhere, just as it changed yours that very first day you heard and understood the truth about God’s great kindness to sinners,” Paul told the Christians in the city of Colosse.

   “We ask God to give you a complete understanding about what He wants to do in your lives,and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom.  Then the way you live will always honour and please the Lord, and you’ll continually do good, kind things for others.  All the while, you’ll learn to know God better and better.  We also pray you’ll be strengthened with his glorious power so you’ll have all the patience and endurance you need.” (Colossians 1: 6, 9-11).  Patience and endurance to finish the story of God’s surprising and all-surpassing work in your life.

   Ironic, isn’t it?  That process begins when we finally recognize our need for him and place ourselves in the gentle hands of Jesus, having turned our backs on the values of our sin-soaked society. The world cries, “You’re finished!”

   But our Father wipes away the sin and weakness.  We stand before him perfect and complete because of his Son’s awesome sacrifice. We’re washed, not washed up;  done, not done for.  “Yes!” smiles God.  “You’re finished.”  All that remains is to tell the story.  The whole story and nothing but the story.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca