Summer: School's Out!

The other day I was telling my daughter about one of my favorite memories as a kid.  It was the evening on the last day of school.  It was getting dark and I came in from playing with my friends in the neighborhood.  Normally I would be thinking about school the next day.  Then it hit me: there was no school tomorrow.  For a whole summer I would not have to sit in class, ask permission to use the bathroom, and do homework at night.  But let me be clear.  I didn’t stop learning just because school was out.  I learned just as much in the summer.  It’s just that the subject matter was different and the style was far less formal.

When I think about the age to come when everything is made new, I imagine waking up in the first morning in heaven and rejoicing for all the things I won’t have to do anymore.  All the frailties of this body and the dysfunction of this life will be gone for good.  But in the age to come we will keep learning.  For eternity we will explore great mysteries and learn the mind of God.  The classroom of this life will give way to the heavenly laboratory where we will discover answers to our nagging questions.  We will find new questions to ask and discover those answers as well.  We’ll have an eternity to learn the greatness of God.  And it will take eternity to learn the greatness of God.