“The end” is very final. No more. Even in an age of remade and rebooted movies and TV shows, you can never experience the original again, as it was, at that time. MASH, Seinfeld, Cheers, and Home Improvement are all over. Johnny Carson won’t host The Tonight Show again. “The end” also extends to products and businesses. Canon recently announced it would end sales of its EOS-1v, the last remaining model of film camera that the company has sold in Japan. Their film cameras will come to the end of their 80-year history. Sears is closing another 72 stores, as well as Toys R’ Us and other retailers going out of business. As a teen-ager I worked at Consumers Distributing in the stock room; they closed out in 1996. I think the building is still there, maybe it became a coffee shop? All good things must end, even all bad things must end. But don’t be at wit’s end; all’s well that ends well.
The good news is that we as Christians do not end. Although our lives end in this life and this world will pass away, we have hope. Believers and followers of Jesus will continue. There is a new heaven and new earth on the horizon, and Christians look forward to eternal life with Him. Jesus told His followers in John 14, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” What a wonderful promise to hold on to when times are hard! Jesus went to prepare a place with enough space for His people and will come back to get them, and there we will live with Him forever. If you are born again, life with Christ will never end, and there will be no more tears or fears or pains or sorrows. This is encouraging and comforting, no matter what you face.
We are not TV shows or stores or antiquated pieces of technology. Belief in God and His Son, Jesus, is our entryway. His death was not an end; His resurrection gives us new life and a beginning. Belief in God and also in Jesus is not an end. He is the way and truth and life, the promise of eternity, the only, perfect sacrifice for your many past, present, and future sins. If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come, and will never end.