Last week, I heard a sweet, elderly lady talk about a car accident she experienced in the winter. As they were going to church, she and her husband hit black ice on a mountain road. The car whirled in a circle and rolled over three times. As the car tumbled, she remembers thinking, “Well, this will end.”

She might have meant her life was about to end. But I heard the phrase like a promise for all the hard times in my life.

This. Will. End. 

The upside-down-roll can’t last forever.

None of the difficult earth stuff lasts forever. Not labor pains, cancer scares, financial woes, marital strife, or terror in the night. Not even grief will last forever. Some of these things may end badly on this side of Heaven. But, the agony of endurance will end. Then, we begin the walking forward in a new reality. With loss, perhaps. But forward.

As for my friends in the car accident, they rolled to a stop, right-side-up, still headed in the same direction. They hopped into the next car that came along and arrived at church on time.

That is the attitude I want to adopt. When this trouble ends, I will move on. I’ll keep going even if I have bruises. And, I will thank God for His protection. I will sing, too, because I know that one of these days all the rolling and whirling and suffering will end forever.  We will finally reach the Place of Pure Delight where we have been going all our lives.

And that delight, Dear Reader, will never end.

(Disclaimer: This is a happy post, so we aren’t talking about what happens to the folks who don’t love God. But, if you are worried about that, please email me. Eternal tumbling would be awful.)