Happy Endings

Tonight we watched a movie at our church called "The Mission". It is a little over 20 years old now, and I have watched it at least 8 times. It was good to watch again twice this weekend.

The Mission is a movie about the Jesuit missionary movement's mission in South America at about the same time as the founding fathers. The movie shows how the Jesuit missions became successful in South America, and then destroyed by European and church politics. It ends with the priests and the natives being killed by Portugese soldiers, and with the priests standing and fighting and dying with the people.

It is truly a beautiful movie about the beauty and the evils of church and ministry, but it does not have a happy ending.

I have been thinking about how much we crave happy endings. We expect everything in our lives to have a happy ending. We think the meaning life is about being happy and having a happy ending to every problem.

Not everyone's story is a Disney story. There is a beauty to failing right and failing well. There is a beauty to living a life that is less than ideal with strength and dignity. There is something beauiful about a story that isn't easily resolved, that isn't easy, that is not always worked out and completely understood.

Because, sometimes life is like that. Unresolved and ununderstood. But good and true and beautiful nonetheless.