In novels, every loose end must come together and be tied up.  In real life, they almost never do.

My friend Holly, a wife and mother and piano teacher, was telling us about her son Andrew’s snowglobe.  The music it puts out “drives me nuts,” she says, “as a musician with certain OCD tendencies.”  The snowglobe’s music apparatus plays “White Christmas,” but not completely.. After the line “May your days be merry and bright….” it just ends, then repeats itself.   Holly asks, “What evil genius in the music box factory decided they couldn’t put in those final nine notes? Gaaaah!!!

I smiled.  Holly’s father is a pastor and her heart belongs exclusively to the Lord Jesus Christ.  That’s why I felt comfortable in sending her my little lesson on Andrew’s snowglobe music box.

“What a great metaphor for life, where maybe ten  percent of anything ‘resolves.’ Novelists must make all the threads come together at the end, but in real life, that rarely happens.  So, Andrew’s globe is sending him a message: ‘Get used to it, kid.’

“Only at the end, the ‘real end,’ will all things come together and all accounts be settled.  When that happens, every eye shall see Jesus, every knee bow before Him, and every tongue confess Him as Lord. Amen.”

Paul said it like this.  Now we know in part.  But then, I shall know just as I also am known.  (I Corinthians 13:12).

John had a word for us.  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.  But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (I John 3:2)

Think about it…

In this life, we never find out who the real murderer was. Some guy goes to prison for fifty years, and then the DNA reveals he was not the culprit and the courts convicted the wrong guy.

A Hitler or Saddam Hussein will slaughter untold thousands, millions even, of God’s creation.  And then, they die by one way or the other. Where is the justice in that?  One life for ten thousand?

God will sort it out.  Justice will prevail.

Count on it.

In this life, we rarely see the unjust get their comeuppance.  Edith Mallory is a wicked witch, of a sort, in one of Jan Karon’s “Mitford” books.  When the priest, Father Tim Kavanaugh, refuses her overtures toward marriage, she lashes out to hurt him and the community any way she can. That includes doubling the rent on the Main Street Cafe where the rector and his friends eat breakfast most mornings.  Nothing anyone says will change her mind; she is adamant and vindictive.  Because the profit margin in the little eatery is so slim, the owners have no choice but to shut it down. Their hearts are broken, and many in the community come together to help them dismantle all the equipment and move out the supplies.  That’s how they made a discovery.

The underpinnings of the building were rotten.  At any point it could have collapsed and killed a lot of people.  Therefore, the fancy dress shop which Edith Mallory was engaging–and to whom she had promised the store the next day after the cafe vacated it–went elsewhere, to a different city.  Father Tim and the cafe owner paid her a visit with a proposition: If she would have the building repaired, the owner would agree to a 20 percent raise in rent with a 5 year lease.

She went ballistic. No way.  However, her Mediterranean cruise awaited and she had no time to negotiate.  As they held their ground, she seethed and boiled and raged. And finally agreed.

Only in novels do things come together this beautifully.  Real life is something else.

In real life–if I may use that overworked, poorly understood, term–we rarely find out who shot J. R., why the pastor changed his mind about the new sanctuary, or what happened to my wife’s charm bracelet which she hid and ended up hiding from herself.

We all want resolution.  And it’s coming.

We must wait on the Lord, and trust that He is in charge and has this whole thing in His hands.

The words of Habakkuk come to mind.  I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me…. Though it tarries, wait for it. Because it will surely come.  It will not tarry. (Habakkuk 2:2-3)