| “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” |
| —Ecclesiastes 3:11 |
I never stopped to think too intently about the phrase, “And it came to pass …” Because, like the phrase “Once upon a time …” that first phrase often appears in fairy tales. It also repeatedly comes up in Scripture with the regularity of a “Verily, verily …” or “Finally, brothers …” But, this time I paused in my reading to realize that, at some point, all the instances of our lives do, indeed, come to pass. They may have begun, but they also will end. They have “come to pass.”
As much as we like to hold on to the familiar, we are told in Matthew 24:35 that even:
Heaven and earth will pass away.
It’s certainly true that throughout the existence of our universe, things come to pass. Now perhaps that kind of statement shakes our foundations a bit. If we believe that God is the “Blessed Controller of all things,” we can relax in the knowledge that a wise and loving Father God plans out and executes the unfolding of our futures.
In Revelation 21:6 we read these words of Jesus Himself:
“I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.”
We also have the written Word of God in Psalm 139:16 that states:
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Another way to look at this phrase, “And it came to pass …” has to do with troubles in our lives. Sometimes we think they will never end—that God has ordered something and we have to deal with it forever. Not so. We should remember that troubles, too, will eventually “come to pass.”
The Psalmist in Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 was downcast because of trouble in his life. But, he spoke these words to himself three times:
What are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
I once heard a sermon where the pastor preaching called this “the eventuality of God’s work.” We can rest in the knowledge that our wise and loving Father knows just how long our troubles will last. Whether they have their ending at some point down the road on this earth, or whether at the moment we pass from life here to new life in Eternity, our troubles will end.
And, oh yes, if we belong to God, through faith in Jesus Christ, we can know for a certain that not only do things “come to pass”—but that truly, we will live “happily ever after.” How’s that for a good and proper end to the story?
