Happily Ever After

Everyone loves a good fairytale ending – rags to riches, survival against the odds, the princess marrying the pauper. Stories with a happy ending have a powerful way of cheering us and can even leave us feeling optimistic about life and the future. 

But then we scroll through the news app on our phones, or we remember the uncertainties we’re facing in our own lives. Any sense of optimism we might have feels fragile at best.

Reading the story found in the Gospels, we might expect like any good story some kind of fairytale ending. And for many, that’s exactly what you get. The stone is rolled away and Jesus Christ, the misunderstood hero of the story rises from the dead, the underdog triumphs.

But what if it’s not a fairytale ending? The claim at the heart of the Christian Faith is that Easter is neither a fairytale nor an ending, but something much better – a true new beginning.

Christian Apologist Glen Scrivener recounts a famous conversation between friends J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis in his little book “The myth that really happened.” Lewis’ main problem with Christianity was the Easter story. Tolkein encouraged him to consider the ways the story is different to the mythical stories he loved so much – presented as history, anchored in time and space involving real people and attested events.   

Lewis would later write, “As a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing.”

The final pages of the story of the Gospels present us with a risen Jesus, conqueror of sin and death and all that is wrong with the world. Offering to all who will put their trust in him a truth that we can build our lives on. Lives that will continue to face the same struggles and uncertainties that come with living in this world – but carrying with us a sure and certain hope of a true new beginning, with God, that will last happily ever after.

We’ll be celebrating and exploring this true new beginning at all our Easter services and events – all welcome!