Dear Christa—
The recognitions are all given. The halls are all empty. The
trash cans are all full. And, as I glue the last broken binding on a literature
book to store away, it strikes me: What will it be like when I’m gluing the
very last binding for the very last time?
I think it will feel
strange.
I often joke about retiring, but that’s a blank page that the
sovereign God has not written anything on yet that I can see. But, there is
something wonderful about ending a school year. Kids and staff are ready to
close the book. The Colorado summer sun is warm…finally. There’s always that
feeling that I ought to be doing some “school” work that takes about two weeks
to shake. Yet, I love the tempo of the school year where there is always an ending
that leads to a beginning with new students, new clothes (in dress code, of
course), and a new chance to do better than the year before.
But, there will come a year when instead of stuffing the
closet in room 201 to the breaking point, I will close it mostly empty.
Someday, I will close this book and open another. Is that not the way of life?
And endings and
beginnings remind so.
Christa, you close a book with Hannah this week, and you
will open another…more beautiful. All these books—I want to read them closely.
I want to enjoy them fully. But, unlike this literature book I place on the
shelf, our life books can never be reread no matter how desperately we wish we
could. We close one. We open another.
When I do close my teaching book for the final time, I think
I’ll look back on it tenderly. Such good friends to share life with. Such
potential surging in young hearts and minds. But, no one should ever close the
last page of a book without a new one to open. And, there are no new books yet
for me.
Then one day—we don’t know when—all these endings and
beginnings will lead to the grandest ending and beginning of all…when we close a
temporal book for one eternal.
The pages of a good book should be splattered with tea
stains and tear stains. Read each chapter closely. Embrace and squeeze out the
closeness of the God who loves us—the God who has written a book with no broken
bindings—a setting and plot we can’t possibly imagine.
—the parishioner who
doesn’t do anything
