Graduation - A New Horizon

Parents and Students,

Below is an article from http://www.boundless.org/ on the subject of graduation. I encourage you to read it. Any comments are welcomed. Enjoy your holiday weekend and show love and admiration to the families that provide and protect our freedom.

Be blessed.

Shannon

Commencement
by J. Budziszewski
For some years, the churches near "Post-Everything University" have held an unofficial graduation ceremony for the new graduates, parallel to the University's official one. This year Professor Theophilus was invited to deliver the Charge at the unofficial Christian commencement.
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Honored guests, this ceremony is called a "commencement." I'd like us to think about the word. Graduation is said to mark the end of college, and so it does. But a commencement is an occasion of commencing: Not of ending, but of beginning.
Graduates, everything depends on what it is that you think you're about to commence.
This week I attended the official commencement rites at Post-Everything University. I don't know what the graduates themselves thought they were about to commence, but I know what the speaker thought they were about to commence. He thought they were about to commence BEING IMPORTANT. Most of his talk was an invitation to vanity and pride.
The first of his four pieces of advice was "Never let anyone tell you that you aren't better than other people." You may have been flattered by your teachers, but I hope your churches have taught you better. As Paul wrote to the Romans, "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought." As he demanded of the Corinthians, "What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?"
The speaker's second bit of advice was "Remember that you are joining an elite." It's true that you are attaining a higher status, but you have been taught differently about that, too, haven't you? Once Jesus rebuked His disciples by telling them "You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all."
Third, the speaker urged "Be all you can be." If that slogan means "Be as faithful, dedicated, and true as you can be," then it's good advice, but he didn't say anything about faith, dedication, or truth. What he spoke about was getting ahead — being a success as the world measures success. A famous photographic satire on the idea of "being all you can be" shows a man bloated with the corpulence of a thousand excessive meals, diving into swimming pool, all the water parting before him like the Red Sea. The photo is not a warning against the deadly sin of gluttony, but against the deadly sin of pride. The body of the man is a parable of what our souls will be like if we feed on our self-importance.
Finally the speaker urged graduates to say with the author of the poem Invictus, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." No, you are neither masters of your fate nor captains of your soul. Christ is those things already. Your office is not to direct the boat but to be the boat, sailing on His living breath. He purchased you with His blood, and as the seal of His purchase, He has painted a new name on your prow. C.S. Lewis remarked that "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it." Remember that.
Let me suggest what you are really commencing. You are commencing — beginning — two things. Really, you commenced them on the day you were baptized, but today you are commencing them in a new way, because you have finished your basic education and you are ready to go into a world that does not know the living God.
First, you are commencing to do something; second, you are commencing to become something.
What you are commencing to do is to build up the Kingdom of God. I'm sure you know the parable of the Talents. Three servants were entrusted by their Master with various portions of His wealth, to care for while He was traveling. When He returned, He asked each servant for an accounting. Two servants had invested their shares, and doubled them. The other had hidden his share under a rock, because he was afraid to take a risk. Every penny was safe, but nothing had been achieved with it.
This parable is not about investing your money to make more money, as some misguided Christians will tell you. It is about making use of your God-given gifts to build up the Kingdom of God. Your intelligence, your mechanical aptitude, or your musical sense — your mathematical ability, your insight into human character, or your ability to organize people — whatever your gifts may be, they are not really yours. You are just His agent to invest them in His Kingdom. Everything in us that we devote to Christ will become greater and more glorious in Heaven. But everything in us that we do not devote to Christ will be burned up like straw in a furnace before we pass those gates. Paul puts it this way:
For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.
Perhaps you ask, "But how am I to use my gifts to build up the Kingdom of God? How am I to use my talents for Christ?"
I can't tell you that. Perhaps he calls you to be a wife and mother. Perhaps he calls you to teach or preach. Perhaps he calls you to make laws or make machinery. I can only tell you that if you yield utterly to Him, you are in for a great adventure with many surprises, different than anything you could imagine. There will be something about your motherhood, teaching, preaching, lawmaking or machinery-making that transcends and glorifies motherhood, teaching, preaching, law-making or machinery-making, because it speaks undeniably of Him.
I said that besides commencing to do something, you are also commencing to become something. This is even more important.
You see, the Holy Spirit does not intend to leave you as you are. You are an image of God — a mirror of the Lover of Souls. But you are also a fallen sinner — a mirror with smudges, smears, and cracks. When people look at you now, they may not see your Redeemer very clearly, and sometimes they may not see Him at all. He intends to melt all your glass to a white heat and pour it out again. He intends to grind you to a perfect finish. He intends to bond pure silver to you so you reflect every bit of His light. He intends to buff and burnish and polish you until the brilliance of His reflection in you is almost too much for the eyes of the angels.
Do you understand what I am telling you? God cares about the kind of person you will be even more than about what kind of things you will do. Be ready, because He is going to mess with you. Your Maker's intention isn't merely to flush the sin out of you, but to pour Himself into you. His intention is for you yourself to become a blaze of love beyond what you can now imagine, and this will be pure gift, because none of us deserves a speck of it.
This is what you must do. You must say and mean, with every fiber of your will, the same thing that a certain other young person, perhaps even younger than you, said and meant to the angel Gabriel: "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Be it unto me according to your word." At those words her body became the doorway through which God Himself took flesh and became man.
I charge you to do as she did, offering yourself to the living God as a living sacrifice. I charge you not to fit Christ into your life, but to allow Him to fit you into His. I charge you to hold onto Him through every setback, confusion, humiliation, and doubt. And I charge you to put on the full armor of God.
I charge you to say to Him on this day of "commencement," of beginning, "This is not my commencement, Lord, but thine; begin in me a new work." Then it will be a commencement indeed: a beginning of something that will never end.
In the name of the Triune God. Amen.

Copyright © 2003 J. Budziszewski. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. This article was published on Boundless.org on May 20, 2009.