The Last Will be First and the First Last

Isaiah 55:6-9; Philippians 1:12-14, 19-30; Matthew 20:1-16

A common focus for the month of September is education. In Great Britain, the school term for autumn traditionally begins on or near September 29, the day Christians traditionally celebrate St. Michael and All Angels. Our learning goes on throughout our lives. A Sunday School song by American hymnwriter Fanny J. Crosby, who lived from 1820 to 1915, begins, “Let me learn of Jesus; He is kind to me; once He died to save me, nailed upon the tree.” Learning the greatness of our God and growing in our understanding of the amazing plan for our salvation is our duty and delight in every season of our earthly life. And it does not stop then. The German hymnwriter Johann Mentzer, who lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, shares a special vision of heaven as he concludes the text of “Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices” with a view of eternal education, expressing the faithful hope one day that he will “learn with choirs of heaven to sing eternal anthems to my King” (LSB 811:5). May our learning and our singing both be blessed!