“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.” – Sam, The Two Towers

Sam’s right, often we seem not to believe the Story could have a truly happy ending.

Too much bad has happened, the world has been marred by the fall and its consequences, and it’s hard to imagine how things could ever be set to rights.

But that, I think, is the key - imagination.

Our imagination, when it comes to the end of the Story, is far too small.

We can imagine apocalyptic wars and judgment raining down from a dark sky, Hollywood special effects and a last day of devastation before we are taken away to heaven, but the idea that this place in all its beauty and brokenness could be set right can seem beyond our ability to envision.

Our eschatology is inhibited by a lack of imagination.

The stories we’ve defaulted to for too long, stories of escape into an ethereal heaven and the destruction of God’s good creation, are easier to imagine but lead us to share a Gospel that isn’t as good as the real good news.

Those stories of escape and destruction inhibit us from working towards God’s future here and now, towards a day when all things on heaven and earth will be set to rights, because it’s hard to believe things or act on them when you can’t even begin to imagine them.

Perhaps in imagining the Story’s end the theologians and the exegetes must become painters and singers, sculptors and poets, taking language to its end and then some as we attempt to articulate a better and more biblical hope than what we’ve often settled for.