Happily Ever After #Job #fairytale #harrypotter #hallowsnothorcruxes

Job 42:10-17

10 And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. ¹¹Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money^* and a gold ring. ¹²The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. ¹³He also had seven sons and three daughters. ¹⁴He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. ¹⁵In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. ¹⁶After this Job lived for one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. ¹⁷And Job died, old and full of days.

So here we are Job (at least one of, if not the) first written fairy tale and it ends happily ever after…so this means that tempted as we are to write this off as a “happily ever after” if this is one of the first AND we make note that there is no such thing

He has more children than before (more boys always important)…is more wealthy and is even able to give his daughters an inheritance….(yay!)

But what makes this a happily ever after is not the kids and the money..its God’s presence...its the knowledge that (remember this is pre-Jesus) bad things can happen to anyone, and it isn’t about judgement.

Happily Ever After is experiencing the love of God!

Its knowing God is present in your life.

Job was GUARENTEED a happily ever after. He has experienced God, and because of that his life will be happy.

No matter what.

Those other details are mere illustrations of the truth of God’s love!

And it makes all the difference…….

That is why after experiencing Jesus Christ, “Happily Ever After” became viable…because we are living into God’s presence…before Jesus Christ there was NO SUCH THING. Now we know death isn’t the end.

We use this theology in fantasy/fairy tales today!

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, p. 328.

• Engraved on the headstone of James and Lily Potters. Taken from the Bible, (1 Corinthians 15:26)

“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means… you know… living beyond death. Living after death.” p. 329 which of course is what Jesus Christ made possible……changing the world and the way we experience it as we know it

Here’s to living happily ever after

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times. View all posts by katyandtheword