Go Your Way Until the End

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Actually, it seems to me that one can hardly say anything either bad enough or good enough about life.” The journey of being human twists and turns between delight and misery, joy and pain. We run down the road as fast as we can, all the while hoping the trip doesn’t end any time soon.

The new year is a natural time to reflect on the year that has been. All I can say about my year is that it has been unexpected, but when I reflect, I realize I’ve never had an “expected year.” No year I have lived has ever gone the way I planned on January 1st. Each year was far worse and far better than I could have guessed, and I rarely even know which parts are which.

The book of Daniel emphasizes that God alone knows and shapes our future. “He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him” (Daniel 1:21-22). God is the author of history, not I.

Well, if God knows, why doesn’t he just tell us what comes next?

First of all, we should remember that we wouldn’t believe it if he did. Habakkuk was told exactly that, “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Habakkuk 1:5). What makes us think we could believe or even understand the plot if God showed us every page before it happened?

Daniel, for his part, was shown more of the future than nearly any other, and yet it always left him more confused than when he began.

• “As for me Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed, but I kept the matter in my heart” (Daniel 7:28). 

• “And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it” (Daniel 8:27).

• “O my lord, by reason of the vision pains have come upon me, and I retain no strength ... no breath is left in me” (Daniel 10:16-17).

•  “I heard, but I did not understand” (Daniel 12:8).

Maybe I don’t want to know the future after all!

After all that Daniel saw, he ends his book still in considerable ignorance. “Then I said, 'O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?'” (12:8) The response he was given by a visiting angel is very comforting to me. “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. ... Go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days” (12:13). The road is often long and perilous, but God's promise is that he knows where we are going. We will get where we need to be in the end. No trick of circumstance will prevent us from ending up in our “allotted place” when the story concludes.

"Go your way till the end." That sounds like pretty good New Year’s advice to me. Let us resolve to worry less about the future of our story and trust more in the Author who has written the final page. I don’t know what happens next, but I should probably get on with it and see what God has in store.

Dr. Benjamin Williams is the Senior Minister at the Edgemere Church of Christ in Wichita Falls, TX and a regular writer at So We Speak. Check out his books The Faith of John’s Gospel and Why We Stayed or follow him on Twitter, @Benpreachin.