In childhood when we wanted to prove
that we would keep a promise, we'd cross our hearts and say, “Cross
my heart and hope to die if I tell a lie” (with variations!) That sealed it. We
really meant it!
I know just where I was at the time I
made an early promise to God. Our Christian Endeavor youth group met
on Sunday nights in the parlor of the historic downtown First
Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. One of my favorite hymns
was the classic:
“O Jesus, I have promised to serve Thee to the end; Be Thou
forever near me, my Master and my Friend; I shall not fear the
battle, if Thou art by my side, nor wander from the pathway, if Thou
wilt be my guide.”
“Yes, Lord, that's what I promise,”
I earnestly, fervently prayed with my fourteen year old understanding and the
flush of my early commitment to surrender totally to the will of God for my
life and my future. “Cross my heart and hope to die if I tell a lie. I will serve
Thee to the end!”
In my honest innocence I intended to
be a promise keeper. I could not have known where throughout the
world life my life commitment would take me in my nearly ninety years.
What battles I would be called upon to fight, where God's rough pathways might lead, what
consequences there would be from wanderings from the pathways of
God's guidance, what service “to the end” would involve.
Have I reached the end? The end of
what? Scripture speaks of many aspects of "the end."
In Hebrews, “Whose [Christ's] house
we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm
until the end,” and “show the same diligence so as to realize the
full assurance of hope until the end,” and “the end of the ages.”
“For we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the
beginning of our confidence firm unto the end” And when speaking of
Joseph, “when his end was nigh.”
Saint Peter echoes, “the end of all
things is at hand,” and “receiving the end of your faith, [even]
the salvation of [your] souls,” and “But the end of all things is
at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer.”
Saint John adds, “He [Jesus] loved
his own that were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”
Saint Paul declares, “He shall also
confirm you unto the end [the day of our Lord Jesus Christ],” “Then
[comes] the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even
the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority
and power.”
The book of Revelation thunders “And
he that overcomes, and he that keeps my works unto the end, to him
will I give authority over the nations.” Saint John quotes Jesus,
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end.”
What then are the different ends?
The end of my mortal life on earth,
as Saint Peter expressed, “knowing that the laying aside of my
earthly dwelling is imminent.” All flesh is subject to that end,
our bodily death.
The end of my calling from God. My
task is done, “I have finished my course” as Saint Paul realized
of himself.
The end as of the gospel of the
Kingdom being preached unto all nations, “then shall the end
come.”
The end of all things, life as we
know it, the world as we know it, the end of the age as explained by Saint Peter in
the fourth chapter of his first epistle and the third chapter of his
second epistle. The present heavens and earth will be destroyed in
God's judgment. Peter calls God a promise keeper; three times in the
third chapter God's promise is spoken of. The “heavens will pass
away and earth and all its works will be burned up, and all things
destroyed.” Utter devastation.
The end of our waiting—the
glorious Second Coming of Christ, “the summing up of all things in
Christ.”
All of these “ends” are certain to
happen but in what sequence we are each to experience them is only
known to God. These are “the ends” to which in my tender youth I made a promise to
serve Him and a promise renewed in the summit season of my life as a Catholic Christian. God is faithful and will not revoke His promise and, with His
enabling, He doesn't expect me to rescind mine. The Scripture
encourages me to stay faithful and endure to the end in my life
pilgrimage. I'm not on a greased slide into heaven.
I don't like to think of the end of
anything; I'd rather focus on bright, fresh beginnings. The Lord
doesn't leave me dangling in despair or fear to face any of the ends
ahead of me. He lifts my eyes beyond the ends and turns His spotlight
on the new heavens and new earth, on Jesus' promise to “make all
things new,” on my eventual new, resurrected, immortal body, and on
eternal life with Him. “He who endures to the end will receive the
crown of life.”
The bottom line? “For you have need
of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may
receive what was promised” (Hebrews 10:36). What did God, our
Promise Keeper promise? An unfading crown of glory described by
Saint Peter. That we will obtain “an inheritance which is
imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven
for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time [at the end].”
Our Promise Keeper, rather than
“crossing His heart and hoping to die” to prove His faithfulness,
“opened His heart on the cross and died” to be with us and never forsake us through
all “the ends” of life.
