The end

I know this will seem slightly out of place, if there are actually readers out there who think I have a place, but I felt I should write about what has been on my mind since Sunday night.

One thing has dominated, and that one thing is the television show Lost.

I'm aware there are people who don't get it, whatever it was. There are people who actually bragged about having not seen Lost. I certainly do not begrudge those folks, but I would ask that those who don't get it simply let those of us who do live our lives.

Seems a bit like Christianity, doesn't it? Those who get it, get it and those who don't, don't. Neither side can successfully bring the other side to its beliefs. That's okay, but again, I ask that the side that doesn't get it stop begrudging the side that does and understand that the side that does is under command of its leader to tell the side that doesn't all about what the side that does get it feels like and lives like and so forth and don't you get it that it is hard to get?

Got that?

That's Lost. It never made real "sense." It always left us with questions. It was about faith versus science, which in some ways is what life is. Sometimes it takes faith to get up in the morning and faith to lay your tired head on a pillow knowing you did nothing really to further the world that day. It takes science to plug a hole in a well of oil while it takes faith to believe there are people who actually understand what they did and how to fix it.

But in the end, the very end, there is "The end." We all get there. We all have to face it. At the end of Lost, that end was discussed and that vision was so clear to the writers and producers and the characters. It was a light that warmed and cuddled and invited.

To see the main character Jack die, lying in a field of bamboo, with a smile on his face an island wide, knowing he had accomplished that which he had been called to do that only he could do, well, that was heaven to me.

A dear member of one of my churches last night said her heaven was one thing and my heaven and your heaven are different things. She said she and her deceased husband had picked out their heaven and he had simply gone ahead to make that ready for her.

I hope she's right. I really do. I want so badly to see my mother, my pets, my aunts and uncles and even my dad, with whom I had issues. I want to walk in fields of clover and feel the peace that only God can provide. I want to see the throne and see Jesus and God on that throne and know them and see their very faces. I want to feel that light, and yes you can feel light, and dance an absolute jig to know that what I believe so badly is indeed truth.

I want to go, let go and let God, and run with Frankie again, watching him bounce along in absolute joy. I want to know that my task, the one He gave me, was done. I want to, I want to, I want to.

In the end of Lost, that's what I saw. A man had a task, he ran away from it for six years, but in the end, he did it and he died and all of his friends who died at one point or another were there when he finally accepted that death.

Good theology? Probably not.

Good feeling? Absolutely the best I've ever been given by a television show.

There had never been, and probably never will be, another show like Lost. It shined, then faded, then came up with a way to right itself at the end of its third season, had a shaky fourth and fifth season then reinvented itself again. Then it ended.

It was like life is, full of ups and downs and mysteries galore.

But in the end. In "The end" we die. All of us. Some before us. Some after us.

Where we go is up to us. Can we accept what is only available through faith? Can we do the task we've been given? Will all the answers be given?

Yes. Yes. No.

That's Lost.