The End Is a Very Good Place to Start

The Grandfather Effect is a gripping new storytelling podcast from Moody Radio’s Brian Dahlen. The podcast follows Dahlen’s family and their rocky road from relational brokenness to reconciliation. The seven-episode series takes you on an emotional journey into their secrets, faith, sins, and attempts at forgiveness. You can listen here.

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“I figured that a good place to end would be back where we started…”
– Act 5, The Grandfather Effect

There is something beautiful about beginnings, is there not? Fresh anticipation. Newness abounding. “Firsts.” There is something deep inside of us that longs for the garden, for beginnings. After all, the first words of the Bible are, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

The word Genesis directly translates to beginning, so when we quote Genesis 1:1, we are essentially saying “the first verse of the first chapter of the beginning.” In other words the very beginning. And since God saw it fit to document the beginning as the start to His Word, might we also place weight onto beginnings? The beginnings of stories? Of narratives? Of life itself?

What about endings? The final pages of Revelation document a wedding feast and reminds believers of the grace given to us through Jesus…but it also depicts a return to Eden.

The Bible, the Word of God, ends where it started. The only difference? An invitation into restoration through Jesus.

In this final episode of The Grandfather Effect, Brian feels a tug for a final conversation with his parents. This conversation, if you’ve listened, is challenging to hear. It seems to provide a cliffhanger, or a “loose end” to the task at hand and to the series as a whole. 

The finale is less of an ending and more of a beginning as well…

Less of a perfectly packaged “we are okay now” and more of an invitation into restoration, into forgiveness, into the breaking of patterns.

The finality of this journey ends where it started…and seems to provide a new starting point altogether.

Praise God that He is the Alpha and the Omega…the beginning and the end. And that He meets us everywhere in between.

As you listen to the episode, reflect and pray over the following questions…

1. How does the ending of this series make you feel? Do you tend to be more comfortable with beginnings or endings?
2. What is your prayer for Brian’s family? Are the prayers for your own family similar? Devote some time to these prayers.
3. What does an invitation into restoration mean for your life here on earth? For future glory in heaven?