Everything Beautiful 

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

I have such sweet memories of my daddy coming upstairs in the evening to help us girls get settled for the night. He’d open the big red book of fairy tales and read to my sister Kathy and me. They were classic stories of good and evil and the best part was always near the end of the story. My father’s voice would slow a little as he read those heartwarming words, “… and they lived happily ever after.” I loved the sense of happy contentment those words left with me as I drifted off to sleep. 

No matter how young we might be, we instinctively know what “happily ever after” means. The world we live in is, in a way, full of wolves, ghoulish trolls, and big bad bears. We all long for that time when we will live happily ever after.  

Like the teacher in Ecclesiastes says, God has put eternity in our hearts. It’s natural to feel an itchy longing for eternity; that is, a strong yearning for things to turn out “okay” so we can live happily ever after. But only in Christ will we experience the culmination of that age-old struggle when all evil things will be defeated, when everything that is wrong with this world will be made right. Because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, we can live happily ever after. 

Thank you, Jesus, that with you as our Prince of Peace and King of Kings, our story has a happy ending. One day all the dangers of evil and sin will be a distant memory and I will enjoy that happy contentment of knowing that you have made all things right. Thank you for making everything beautiful at the right time.