gateway

The local schools closed for the summer today.

Which means for me the bulk of the morning is spent along at the Royal High, the local secondary school. They have their Prize-giving and Leaving ceremony, with the pupils who are leaving going out through the grand memorial arch, while everyone else applauds.

A long, tearful line of young men and women, for whom now these days that they've shared in the school are all in the past. Their schooldays now are past: they won't ever have them again.

I always find it striking that the arch through which they go, quite literally, out from the hall and into the outside world, is the memorial arch, bearing the names of those from the school who died in the first world war.

A reminder that there is somehow a cost involved in being able to press on forward, even ninety one years on, into a whole new chapter in their lives.

The folk who died were most of them not much older than the pupils who were leaving school today. They all of them paid a price which meant, some three generations on, there's a future these young folk today can enjoy.

The memorial arch is the gateway to the future.

And I wondered today if maybe that's what is needed again, if we're going to give to our children, and their children, too, a future that's bright with the presence and blessing of God.

I suspect that we'll have to put our lives, too, on the line. I suspect there'll be a cost we'll have to pay. I suspect if we want to create that sort of gateway to the future God desires, it's going to cost us everything. We have to be ready for that. We're being prepared for that.

Death and resurrection.

The gateways to God's future always travel through a tomb.