Do Stories End?

A few days ago, I posted about visiting my grandmother. I thank all of you who prayed for she was released today from the hospital and is back home. As I thought about this experience, I considered that it seemed like this story has a happy ending. As soon as I said that though, I realized what I had said. Who says the story ends? Is there not more to this?

Many of our stories end with “And they lived happily ever after.” Somehow, we think that’s an ending. Now in written form, it seems stories do end, but where the story ends, each time you could simply put “to be continued.” Yes. The guy got the girl, but you go on from there. What happened in that marriage? Did they have kids? What happened to those kids? Etc.

Now someone might bring up the point of death. Isn’t death the end of a story? It is never the end. It is simply continuation as well. The story just picks up in another time and place. That is, it does so if Christianity is true. Even when one reaches Heaven, that is not the end of the story. In fact, it is only the beginning. The Chronicles of Narnia do not truly end in the Last Battle when the New Narnia is revealed. One could say that is when the story truly begins.

This brings up an interesting point to an atheistic worldview. Does the story end? If everything comes to nothing and we have the cessation of existence, then it would seem that, yes, the story does end. Out of nothing, nothing comes. If the story ends, then one has to wonder if there was ever a point to begin with, especially since the meaning of a story comes from the author.

Every story has a point. Even if one wanted to postulate an atheist writing a story to counter that idea, then he has actually shown the idea. He has written a story with the point of supposedly saying stories have no point, which would be a self-refuting story. If that is the case, then should we not say that our lives have points behind them? Either all is meaningless or it is not. If we create meaning, it is only because there is no meaning to begin with.

I insist that there is meaning. We all know that there is. As soon as we open our mouths to say something, it means we believe there is meaning. I believe that this is indeed a story and that if this is a story, then there is an author. I suggest that we try to live our lives with that in mind and remember wherever we are, it is not the end of the story. It is at most simply “To be continued.”