More Tragedy

I finished The Three Musketeers last week (year). It didn’t end the way I thought it would. Most of our stories now (movies count as stories – but their still not as good as books) end happily.

The boy gets the girl and the whole world smiles. The bad guy is defeated and the good guys win. While in the overarching scheme of everything I agree, but in the day-to-day plot of a lifetime tragedy is very much the main course.

Yet at the same time it’s possible to look back over your own history and see the good of it all. While it was deeply tragic then it now serves a better purpose.

All of that to ask this, “Why don’t we have more tragedies on the screen?”

When Romeo dies and so does Juliet. When Constance dies in the arms of her lover. When the family remains broken.

I know the answer; “We want to escape from the hurt for an hour or so into a fiction.”

Well that’ll work for a day but not for another. Sooner or later pain must be faced and a lesson must be learned. The more we run the less we’ll see and our ignorance will continue to grow. For pain is a great teacher (not a comfortable one, neither was my soccer coach, but he got results).

So my thought is this: stop running from all your fears and worries and start facing them. Yet in all of this facing look to Jesus.

He perfectly faced your greatest fear.