All that is not eternal is eternally out of date

[soso]

Today's Reading

Theologians have sometimes asked [whether we shall ‘know one another’ in Heaven],

and whether [the particular love-relations /worked out on earth] would then continue to have any significance.

It seems reasonable to reply: ‘It may depend on [what kind of love it had become, or was becoming, on earth].’

For, surely, to meet in the eternal world someone //for whom your love in this, however strong, had been merely natural,

would not be (on that ground) even interesting.

Would it not be like meeting in adult life someone //who had seemed to be a great friend at your preparatory school

/solely because of common interests and occupations?

If there was nothing more, if he was not a kindred soul, he will now be a total stranger.

Neither of you now plays conkers. You no longer want to swop your help with his French exercise for his help with your arithmetic.

In Heaven, I suspect, [a love //that had never embodied Love Himself] would be equally irrelevant.

For Nature has passed away.

[All //that is not eternal] is eternally out of date.

From The Four Loves

The Four Loves. Copyright © 1960 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.