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I’m a complete wimp when it comes to movies. If it doesn’t have a good ending, count me out. I don’t care how talented a producer James Cameron is, you’ll never get me to sit through a showing of Titanic. I can’t begin to tell you how upset I was at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. Some of my favorite characters disintegrated before my eyes: Peter Quill, Gamora, and Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, and T’Challa from Black Panther.

It was almost as disillusioning to me as the ending of Easy Rider where Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, riding their motorcycles and minding their own business, get blown away by some rednecks with a shotgun in a pickup truck, and the credits roll. Are you kidding me?

I am such a wimp that I’ll sometimes fast forward past awkward or difficult scenes in movies that I like. I did that one time with School of Rock where Jack Black’s character, who’s been impersonating a private school teacher, is finally found out, and the parents are furious, and the cops are called. And you knew it was coming. Oh, the anticipation!

Even in one of my favorite movies of all time, Tombstone, I dread the scene where Morgan Earp gets fatally shot in the back while playing billiards.

But you can handle it, if at least you know the movie has a good ending.

Now, imagine having the ability to change the ending of a movie, so that the hero doesn’t die, and the bad guy gets caught and punished; and everybody’s happy, and imagine how refreshing if you knew there wouldn’t be any disappointing sequels.

I want you to think for a moment of your life as a motion picture; a mixture of exciting and quiet scenes, joyful and sad scenes, and maybe a few cringe-worthy scenes along the way. But the ending, from our perspective, hasn’t been written.

All of us have a few bone-headed things we’ve said or done at points in our lives that we wish we could go back and undo. Hopefully those relationships have long since healed, and forgiveness granted. Across the span of an entire lifetime, our moments of foolishness will hopefully not be what define us. What is behind you is not nearly as important as that you proceed from this time forward in wisdom; showing love to those around you, and especially walking humbly and faithfully with your Creator.

• Will you heed the words of the prophet Isaiah? Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.
• Will you heed the words of King David? Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found; surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him.
• Will you heed the words of Rabbi Paul? For God says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation’.

There is time to get in before those heavenly gates close. But there isn’t much time. Don’t be like the foolish bridesmaids in Yeshua’s parable, who frittered away their time, indifferent, nonchalant about the soon return of the bridegroom, and when the time came were caught utterly unprepared, and got locked out of the wedding feast.

You have options, whether to serve Adonai and Messiah, or to fill your life with trivialities, oblivious to the eternal judgment that is fast approaching. What you don’t have is unlimited time, or the knowledge of when it’s up. It could be years, or your life could end abruptly and unexpectedly. It only makes sense to be prepared now, and at all times, to stand before your Creator, who will demand an accounting of your life. That accounting consists of one question: Did you transfer your loyalty to His Son, the Messiah, and receive the atonement He provided, or did you continue defiantly to refuse Him? That is the single criterion that will determine your eternal destiny.

In the penultimate scene in the movie The Matrix, a fight to the death takes place between the protagonist, Neo, and arch-enemy Agent Smith in a subway station. Agent Smith gets the upper hand, has Neo in a death grip and, believing he has already won, and hearing the sound of a subway train approaching, says to Neo, “Do you hear that? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death.” Those of you who have seen The Matrix know he was wrong.

You have an enemy of your soul. He thinks he’s got you. Prove him wrong, too.