BOOKENDS OF MY LIFE
I have been thinking about something I have come to call, "The bookends of my life." Everyone has a beginning at birth, which accounts for that first bookend. As time keeps moving, volumes begin to stack up against each other, each with its own purpose.
Though the volumes are unique there is a thread running through the whole which binds them all together. Some volumes represent those times, when in the valleys of sorrow, disappointment, and failure, life seems to become a frustration, but at the last chapter of those unhappy volumes, in the last paragraphs, one can begin to view the handiwork of God as He brings us through the valley by His divine appointment and sovereign grace. We cannot remove that volume for it is part and parcel of whom we are and who we were, and yet not always pleasant in itself. Those volumes become the fiber which mends with the glue of life in making strong character.
There are always more volumes in the making and, at times, we cannot discern the intent of its presence. In time, the volumes, one by one, terminate in meaning and scope, leaving their mark upon the library of the soul. No man can see what the next volume will become, nor can that volume fail to materialize and come to fruition. The many volumes between the beginning and the ending compose a library known and read by mankind. So, as with the beginning, there comes the bookend at the other end. This bookend is just as important as the first for it takes two bookends to hold together one life, lest the volumes between the beginning and the ending are skewed hither and yon.
The writer recognizes full well that the final bookend is approaching; and how shall that terminal bookend find its place among the many volumes? Would one deign to prolong the appearance of that simple bookend, which is essential to a full and vital life? When, in God's timing the first and the last squeeze together in making one great volume, it is then that the meaning of each entity along the way gives way to a greater volume with distinction and clarity. One life begun and carried to its fruition by a gracious God who alone knows the end from the beginning; to that point I have now come and my trust in the God of the Universe, through His only begotten Son, Jesus gives me an abundant entrance into eternity, wholly by His grace.
That final bookend is not an apparition, but is in clear resolution that what God has begun, He will complete. Therefore, I will lay my head upon His bosom and enter a new world never know to any earth-dweller. In that land of enchantment He shall read all the volumes which constitute my life and shall explain the "why's" and "When's" and "How's", and to my shame I shall blush that I did not see His hand in the writing of my soul!