Two years ago, while I was studying for my masters, I met a girl in the same program named Kelsey. As two conservative Christians from big states who also happen to love music, we were fast friends and eventually ended up being roommates. I shared with her the awesome Catholic-ness that is Audrey Assad and she opened my eyes to the excellent Protestant-ness that is the Barlow Girls. One of the Barlow Girl’s songs, entitled Beautiful Ending goes like this:
Oh tragedy, has taken so many. Love, lost ’cause they all forgot who You were. And it scares me to think, that I would choose my life over You, my selfish heart divides me from You, it tears us apart. So tell me, what is our ending…will it be beautiful? So beautiful? Will my life, find me by Your side? Your love is beautiful, so beautiful… At the end of it all, I want to be in Your arms.
I love this song, not only for it’s beautiful melody, but for the profound lyrics. It manages to sum up, in a four minute song, what our whole lives should be aimed towards. If the most beautiful “ending” of them all is life with Christ in heaven, then what the heck are we doing here on Earth, sinning and being caught up in petty drama? What are we doing, ignoring the Gospel? If we want this beautiful ending, why do we even bother spending time engaged in things that aren’t worthy? Every morning, I should wake up and do what I’m called to achieve… but I always fail.
I think too often we get caught up in the details. If our purpose in life is to love Christ and his children, then all we really need to be doing is that. We all have different callings, different vocations, but the mission is still essentially the same. Why should I be worried about anything other than loving my husband and our little baby to the fullest? We get distracted by things that are shiny and lose complete focus on the goal.
The meaning of the song, I think, is two-fold. There’s the beautiful ending, which is heaven…but then there’s also the beautiful end, which essentially will memorialize our time on earth. What will our purpose be? How will we be remembered? How will we spend our days sharing Christ’s love? How does God want to use our time on Earth? He gave us talents intended to make the world more beautiful, for a more large-scale beautiful ending. Let’s help Him make that happen!
Unfortunately, I need to cut this blog post short… one of the beautiful gifts God gave me has woken up from his nap!
