Now, “For the rest of the story…”

Legendary radio newscaster, Paul Harvey, had a unique trademark to his broadcasting.  Mr. Harvey would begin telling his audience a real life story about an incident, or an individual, and then come to a pivotal point in the story where he would fill in “the missing details/or information” that made the story so fantastic!  Mr. Harvey would then conclude by saying, “Now you know the rest of the story!”  People by the millions would listen to his broadcasts every day just to get the rest of the story!

As I pass through the pages of the Bible, I too would like to know “the rest of the story” about certain individuals.  There’s the boy who gave his lunch to Jesus to feed 5,000 people.  What ever happened to him?  How about that tax-collector named Zacchaeus.  You know, that “little” man that climbed up into a tree and invited Jesus to his house for dinner.  Whatever happened to him?  Or, how about that little girl, Jairus’ daughter, that Jesus raised from the dead.  What kind of young lady did she grow up to be?

It would be interesting to know how their lives progressed from this points of contact with Jesus!  Did they become leaders?  Own businesses?  Lead others to the Savior?  Did they have children?  What went on in their lives?  It would be fascinating to know, wouldn’t it.  The Bible doesn’t tell us any more than the storylines we are given.  The writers of the Bible felt that that was enough to know. 

As for you and me, we are still writing the chapters of our story!  God is writing that story every day by how we live, how we treat others, the decisions we make, the priorities that shape our lives, the daily witness we give.  While we may NOT know the “rest of the story” for the individuals we made reference to earlier, OUR STORY is still being written every day as we trust God’s grace to have it’s way in our lives.  What a wonderful story is being written!  Let’s live each day for HIS GLORY and HIS HONOR!

Who knows, maybe after we’ve passed from this life someone will speak at our funeral and say, “Now you know the rest of the story!”

“You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.”         2 Corinthians 3:2-3