The First and the Last

Hold a book in your hands and look at the two covers. The front opens on page one, the first letter of the first word, and somewhere far on the other side is the last page, the last letter, the final mark before the binding closes again. Everything that happens in the story, every turn and crisis and quiet stretch, lives in between those two covers, held inside the binding. The risen Christ says of Himself exactly that. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first letter of the alphabet and the last, the Beginning and the End. He was there before your story opened, before the upheaval, before you drew a breath, the first word already spoken. And He waits at the far end of it, beyond the last page your eyes can see, the final word already His. That is the quiet, enormous comfort of it. Because He is both covers of the book, everything written between them is held within His binding, every shaken chapter, every page you would have torn out and burned if you could have, every passage you cannot yet read the meaning of. Not one page of your life falls outside the One who is its first word and its last.

Your story did not begin with you, and it does not end where your sight gives out. That alone is steadying news, because the middle is where you live, and the middle is where everything shook. Christ names Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. He was present before the upheaval ever started, holding the first page. He is already present beyond its end, holding the last, a chapter you have not been able to read yet but He has already written. And here is what that does to the frightening middle. Because He is both covers of the book, every page between them is bound inside Him. The chapter that broke you is not loose, not flung out of the story, not floating beyond His reach. It is held within His binding, fastened on both sides to a Beginning and an End that are secure. You do not have to know how the hard pages resolve. You only have to know Who holds the covers. The One who wrote the first word of you will write the last, and He is keeping every shaken page in between.