Great Endings: Every Time a Bell Rings

“Dear George,

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

Thanks for the wings! 

Love, 

Clarence”

Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, can be a divisive film. Some of us—present company included—consider it a necessary part of our annual celebration and would find any Christmas season without at least one viewing inadequate. Others argue against its inclusion in the holiday canon because of its surprisingly heavy themes.

Family strife, financial anxiety, the devious actions of a small-town robber baron, alcoholism, depression, and suicide all feature prominently throughout the film.

My sister is one of its detractors, and it is not difficult to understand her point of view. Given the state of the world and all the stresses that already accompany the season, why would we gather the family, pour some eggnog, and watch a movie that does not produce much “holiday cheer” until the final ten minutes of its 130-minute runtime?

But perhaps the heaviness of the story is precisely what makes its ending so powerful.

George Bailey is an objectively good man. He loves his family, sacrifices his own ambitions for the sake of others, and devotes his life to helping his less fortunate neighbors get ahead. Yet goodness does not protect him from suffering. Misfortune follows misfortune until George becomes convinced that his life is a failure and that everyone he loves would be better off without him.

In that respect, George’s story calls to mind another story about a good man overwhelmed by an ocean of troubles.

The drama of Job, found in the Hebrew Scriptures, presents us with a righteous man who loses nearly everything through no apparent fault of his own. It can be a difficult text to read, particularly because of its portrayal of God gambling with the life of a devoted servant. I would gently remind us, however, that a story does not need to be read as literal history in order to communicate deep truth. For our purposes, we might approach Job as an ancient drama more than an ancient history and ask what wisdom it offers about suffering, faith, and friendship.

Job suffers deeply. He loses his family, his possessions, his health, and his place within the life of his community. In the midst of his anguish, three friends come and sit with him in the ashes of his life.

They are imperfect friends. But they show up. They sit in the ashes. They mourn with their friend who mourns. And before the story ends, even these damaged relationships are given the possibility of restoration.

After more than forty chapters of grief, argument, unanswered questions, and a divine monologue, Job’s life begins to be rebuilt. The book concludes:

“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. Then 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. The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”

—Job 42:10–12a

You may notice that this ending parallels the conclusion of our controversial Christmas classic.

When word spreads that George Bailey is in serious financial trouble, his entire community responds. The people George has spent his life helping now come to help him. 

The deepest resolution in Job is likewise not simply that he recovers his wealth. It is that he is restored to relationship.

His neighbors comfort him. They bring gifts. Relationships are restored. The conclusion does not undo everything that has happened, but Job’s isolation begins to give way to renewed relationships.

Neither of these endings trivializes the suffering that came before. Community is not an explanation for suffering. It is one of God’s answers to isolation.

We will not always know why suffering comes. We will not always find the words to make another person’s pain understandable. Like Job’s friends, we may sometimes do more harm than good when we try to explain what we should simply be willing to share.

But we can come.

We can sit in the ashes. We can eat bread together. We can bring what we have. We can remind one another that pain is not failure, that needing help is not shameful, and that no one should have to endure the darkest chapter of their story alone.

Perhaps a wonderful life is not a life untouched by hardship. Perhaps it is a life held by grace, and by people willing to show up when the night becomes too heavy to face alone.


Rev. Ryan Young