All of a sudden, we are greeted by September. After a fun-filled summer, children begin to collect themselves and get ready for a new school year. They feel both nervous and excited. Our youngest one is moving up from Elementary school to Middle school this year. With a new school full of new teachers and new students, she is going through a full upgrade in life. Their enthusiasm draws out my own memory from dust covered chamber. I remember the unique smell from new textbooks I used to take home each Fall. It brings me back to my school years when all the children went to grade school with assigned classroom and got promoted to next grade every September.
The beauty of the student life rests in its simplicity and hope. In my opinion, my student life is more beautiful than my children’s. Imagine yourself living at a small town of inland China forty years ago, with no internet, no TV, no telephone of any kind. I had a simple life and enjoyed simple friendships, as simple as an Amish, though not of choice. As I started my formal school years, China began to resume long interrupted college admission, and soon the door was opened for exchange with the West. This gave a tremendous hope to all school children in China and motivated them to study well and move up in grade in September. By moving up the grades you have hope of jumping into a better life. This hope was renewed every September, until one September I did jump to Beijing, and reported to the beautiful campus of Peking University by Weiming Lake. It kept motivating me forward and many Septembers later, I jumped across the Pacific and reported to the beautiful campus of the University of Chicago by Lake Michigan. You have to understand the difference in life forty years ago between Beijing and a small town in China, and between China and US. It is this difference that produces hope. The bigger the difference is, the greater the hope it can produce. It is in this regard that I have pity for children growing up in a middle-class family in US.
For a student, every September is a time to let his hope soar and to renew his commitment. Once out of school, September begins to lose its magic, because there is no more grade to move up to and no more goal. You must live off whatever reserve of hope and strength you had. That is how we begin to grow old in this world. Hope is a vital sign of life, but we, having no hope and without God in the world. (Eph. 2:12 ESV) are dying. In a way we all died in September. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. (Eph. 2:4-5 ESV) We are alive because we have been admitted into a new school, and we are about to move up in grades again! As Jacob dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it. (Gen. 28:12-13 ESV) We are now climbing up this ladder, step by step and ever moving to a higher ground.
Jesus clearly told his disciples that He is this ladder for mortals like us to reach the immortal. Every believer must move up in Him, like a student moving up in grades. We move up from elementary level by remembering His teaching, by proclaiming His truth, by living out His life. As we move up, we would know more about His glory and riches and honor. We are ever encouraged with renewed hope and strength, with excitement and even some nervousness as we get into each new grade. It is far better than any student life in this world. All who lives in Christ, forever lives in September and we have this tremendous hope that in a September day not far away, we would finish our last grade in Christ and jump into eternity, and report to the beautiful holy city. By the river of life, it is a city of gold, with wall of jasper and gates of pearls. There we will live with God forever. Amen!
Prayer: O Lord! Thank you for the glorious calling to follow you! Let us forget what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead and press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus!
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