Good stories tend to work like this: The hero(ine) is described, building sympathy for her/him. Trouble in some form enters, almost always in the person of a villain. The villain has greater power, and inflicts hardship or worse on the hero(ine) and his/her allies. By a combination of character, resourcefulness and maybe some luck, the hero(ine) is able to prevail.

Of course, not all stories have happy endings. In the world of theater and opera especially, many of the stories are tragedies. The hero(ine), and sometimes her/his loved one, die tragically, many times in a terrible irony that the outcome could have been prevented. Often the hero(ine) has a “tragic flaw” which does him/her in.

The stories that engage us tend to fall into these two broad categories. (There are other kinds, and they might entertain us, but they don’t engage our emotions like the two classic forms.) When we turn to the accounts in the Bible, we see the pattern holds true. There is added emotional impact because these aren’t fictions; they are true.

There are happy endings for Joseph, Ruth, Hannah, David, Hezekiah. There are tragic endings for Abimelech, Eli, Jezebel, Athaliah. Many more of both, of course.

What about Jesus’s story? It went from triumph to disaster—brutal, undeserved death. A classic tragedy. But then, as we know, in the end he actually triumphed when the Father raised him from the dead, making it the ultimate happy ending!

The point of the stories in the Bible (true stories) is that we learn from these real people. It is intended that we put ourselves into the stories. Some will fit quite well. In some cases, uncomfortably well. The impact of the stories is immeasurably increased because they don’t come out of somebody’s imagination, they are not contrived. They really happened, and if (when!) we find a fit for our own lives, we need to really pay attention to the outcome.

All of the “main characters” face opposition and trials. One of the first things we should note is that the opposition doesn’t come from a supernatural source of evil. (That kind of story is called fantasy!) The opposition is from other human beings sometimes, but more often comes from within. It is our own weaknesses that trip us up. So many of the stories are there to act as big “Beware!” signs. And, encouragingly, a lot of the stories relate people coming through the trials and their own weaknesses, triumphing in the end.

When we read the accounts of men and women who have gone before, it’s vital that we not think of them as dry, dusty old relics with no relevance. The human creators of plays, novels, movies, etc, work hard to create characters we can identify with, stories that will have an emotional impact on us. A play written centuries ago can still affect us powerfully, because the themes and the people engage us. How much more, the true stories of love, loss, epic battles, human frailty, peril, rescue, triumph. The differences of time and place are not really important. The commonality of human beings facing human challenges is what matters.

The point is to look at the stories in the Bible not as other people’s stories, but as our own. How is our story going to end? We don’t know yet, of course—but what we do know is that some courses of life end in tragedy, and others end in victory over the villains—occasionally external but mostly within.

My prayer is that you and I both will be guided to a happy ending in God’s Kingdom—which depends on our choices and actions in this life. Paul reminds us, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death”. That fearsome foe will be vanquished, has been already for Christ, the first-fruits. There can be no happier ending! Our job now is to find a way to live in a story with that ending.

Love, Paul