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Do you like happy endings? Most people do. There are not many people I know that enjoy a movie that ends on a bad note. In fact, there are not any movies that come to mind that end that way either. Hollywood knows how to make you feel good.  And since entertainment is their goal, how else can you achieve that without a happy ending.  

The good guy always wins.  The bad guy has to pay. It’s the axiom of a good flick and it typically plays out like this: The good guy does’t know he’s anything but realizes it (happy), the bad guy tries to stop him and is almost successful (not so happy), the good guy comes through in the end against all odds and wins (happily ever after).  

I never thought too much of it till I was on a road trip this week with the kids.  For the portion of the trip where the kids had slept all they could, exhausted everything ‘fun’ possible, they now couldn’t sit still and where asking the renown quesitons, ‘are we there yet?’ So I set up the laptop and hit play.  It was a new movie I got from the $5 bin and it hooked them.  

I remember nearing the end of the movie well because my daughter said, ‘I can tell it’s close to the end cause it’s starting to feel happy.’ Nice work Hollywood, success.  Before that they were sad, almost scared, because the good guys were in such peril.  But the conclusion brought them back around ending the movie on a good note, giving us all the feel good sensation. 

There is a major problem with this Hollywood propaganda of course, because not everything is going to end this way.  My kids are already used to happy endings, therefore, if things don’t go the way they want – tantrums! “It’s not fair,” they cry out. Well, try teaching them about fairness when Hollywood has already, at age 6 & 7, taught them that everything in life ends on a good note.  

I suppose there is reality to all this too.  I mean Jesus has already won, right? So no matter how much the enemy get’s a foothold, disrupts, ruins or destroys our God-given plan Jesus is going to win.  Yes! Rejoice!

That is so true, but is that alone our happy ending? Well… while there is victory in Jesus in the end, there is also victory right now, and it doesn’t come from feeling happy. It also doesn’t always mean winning or getting your way.  I can rejoice that in Christ I am victorious, because I am most definitely.  But it’s unfortunate that our ‘Victory in Jesus’ mentality is only viewed at the end, and not throughout life.   

Today we should rejoice because we can have life now, abundantly. 

John 10:10 The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full. 

Even as I conclude this the enemy tries to disrupt my joy.  But I wasn’t created to fulfill my personal delight, but the Father’s… and in that I am delighted. As a co-heir of Christ, I am also His, He is mine.   

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