For over three years, the disciples had wandered from town to town, sometimes with Christ and sometimes without. They had left their homes to become sojourners, to live in temporary dwellings. On the last Passover before Christ’s death, they sat together in the upper room of another home that was not theirs, and they listened as Christ told them, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Christ was not talking of another temporary dwelling, but an abiding place that would be permanent and everlasting.

“And they lived happily ever after. The end" is the way many children’s stories conclude. Other books, some movies, plays and narrated stories announce the end with just those words—“The end.” All physical things have a beginning and an end.

You and I had a beginning. We were conceived and born. The rest of creation that we see—all of the plants and trees and birds and bees—one day came into existence. We all had a beginning, and we will all come to our physical end.