When the Ending is Just the Beginning

Read The Daily:
“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” – John 16:20

Post by Johnda Carpenter

Being a mother is what I consider to be my greatest task on this earth. I have LOVED every single minute of it. We always had a rule in our house that if the kids wanted to play, we would stop what we were doing and would play. I tried my best to have fun with them and teach them my core values and principles. People would always say how fast my kids’ childhood would go and boy were they not joking. After high school, I knew they would be leaving for college and I knew it was going to be so hard to let them go. However, in theory, this was my exact goal. To raise humans that would one day go into the world and do great things. So, as sad as we get when our kids grow up and move on, we should be equally excited because this moment is exactly what we spent the last 18 years trying to accomplish. The humans that have been placed in my care by God are now right at the beginning of their future!

Think about the last time you watched a movie that had a devastating moment—where it seemed like all hope was lost. But then, something shifted, and

What looked like an ending was actually setting up something greater.

Jesus told His disciples that their sorrow would be like labor pains—intense, overwhelming, and painful. But pain wasn’t the point. The joy that followed was.

Disappointment often feels like an ending, but in God’s hands, it’s a setup for something greater. The disciples had to watch Jesus die before they could see the resurrection. Maybe what you’re walking through isn’t the end of the story—maybe it’s just the opening scene of something God is about to do.

Prayer for the Day

God what are you  showing me?  What am I going to do about it?
God help me to see one person that I can serve through a kind word, random act of kindness, or simple gift today?
Make sure you complete the reading or comment today.

Read The New Testament In A Year

4 x 6 Plan | Read: Mark 2:13-28 & 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” Once when John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees do?” Jesus replied, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can’t fast while the groom is with them. But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. “Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?” Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!”  Mark 2:13-28

Now regarding your question about food that has been offered to idols. Yes, we know that “we all have knowledge” about this issue. But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes. So, what about eating meat that has been offered to idols? Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God. There may be so-called gods both in heaven and on earth, and some people actually worship many gods and many lords. But for us, There is one God, the Father, by whom all things were created, and for whom we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created, and through whom we live. However, not all believers know this. Some are accustomed to thinking of idols as being real, so when they eat food that has been offered to idols, they think of it as the worship of real gods, and their weak consciences are violated. It’s true that we can’t win God’s approval by what we eat. We don’t lose anything if we don’t eat it, and we don’t gain anything if we do. But you must be careful so that your freedom does not cause others with a weaker conscience to stumble. For if others see you—with your “superior knowledge”—eating in the temple of an idol, won’t they be encouraged to violate their conscience by eating food that has been offered to an idol? So because of your superior knowledge, a weak believer for whom Christ died will be destroyed. And when you sin against other believers by encouraging them to do something they believe is wrong, you are sinning against Christ. So if what I eat causes another believer to sin, I will never eat meat again as long as I live—for I don’t want to cause another believer to stumble.  1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Read More – Bible Project Overviews: Mark, 1 Corinthians