This is an address that I delivered to the Class of 2016, Dunlap High School, Dunlap, Illinois

Members of the class of 2016, over 40 ago that I sat where you sit, only mine was in a hot gymnasium and I don’t remember who the speaker was let alone anything that he said that night. This reality humbles me. So, it is with a certain amount of fear and trembling that I stand before you tonight wondering if anything that I may will share with you will not only be memorable, but more importantly, helpful.
Over the years I have collected and shared bits of wisdom that I shared with my daughters and others. Tonight I will share with you random thoughts on how to get the most out of life as you stand on the brink the your life’s next chapter.
First, I believe that God breaks into our lives when we least expect it and often in the most surprising and inopportune ways. All of the great faiths of the world have some variation of this foundational teaching:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Over half of the problems of the world would disappear if we would just take this
one elemental teaching to heart.

And this one, from my own tradition:
What does it profit a man (or a woman) to gain the whole world and lose their soul.
Do not confuse your career with your life.
Your career is how you make money.
Your life is is what you invest in others.

Make sure that as you climb the ladder of success that at the end of your life
it was leaning against the right wall.

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That is why it is called the Present.

And speaking of Tomorrow,
Tomorrow,
Today will be a memory.
Make it a good one.
Learn the life lessons of the turtle. They are three.
The only way that a turtle gets anywhere is by sticking its neck out;
The turtle defeated the hare because is moved deliberately and steadily;
If you see a turtle on a fence post you can be sure of two things—
it didn’t get there by itself
and it doesn’t belong there.
None of us are self-made so don’t fall for that lie.
You did not choose your parents.
We did not choose the color of our skin,
the place of our birth,
or our DNA.
We are the products of generations that went before us.

Each one of you is unique.
In the history of humanity there has never been anyone else exactly like you.
No one else has ever had your thoughts,
or your experiences.
You are one of a kind.
You have a contribution to our story that only you can make.

Live so that when others think of fairness or kindness
they will think of you.

Be a man or woman of Character;
don’t be a Character.

Ask yourself who you are when no is looking.

Contribute more than you cost.

Take advantage of your opportunities
but do not be opportunistic.

Don’t throw sand in the sandbox.
You know what that means.

Never lick a steak knife…or any knife for that matter, but especially not a steak knife.

You can’t change others; you can only change yourself.
Trying to change others is an exercise in futility.
But, if you change yourself then everyone around you will react differently
because you are different.

Get our of your comfort zone every now and then.

No one cares if you can dance.
No one.
So, If someone asks you to dance,
dance.
And as far as that goes,
ask someone else to dance.

The tongue is like a lit flame:
it can light a darkened room
or burn a forest.

The most destructive thing in the world is gossip.
Don’t do it.
Ever.

Measure everything that you say or write by these four principles:
Is it true.
Is it helpful.
Does it need to be said.
Does it build up or tear down.
Sticks and stones may not break bones
but words will hurt.
Words are like toothpaste,
once said they can never be put back in the tube.

Laugh at yourself
and never laugh at others.

Success is a choice.
so is failure.
Choose the former.

Whether you can or can’t
you’re right.

Eliminate “can’t” from you vocabulary.
Replace it with,
“I haven’t done that yet.”

Don’t confuse fame with success.

It is not the strong that survive
but the adaptable.
The dinosaurs were strong.
We are adaptable.
But then, so it the cockroach.
Don’t be a cockroach.
If you don’t like change,
you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

When elephants fight
the grass gets trampled.

You can’t like everyone
but you can treat everyone with the respect and dignity befitting a child of God.

Don’t put your happiness up for sale.

You’re never wrong to the right thing.

It takes years to build trust
but only a second to destroy it.

Storms make trees grow deeper roots.

I’ll close by paraphrasing Lukas Graham, as he got it just about right.
Once you were seven years old, and you mama told you,
Go make yourself some friends or you’ll be lonely.
Soon you’ll be sixty years old,
and will you think the world is cold
Or will you have a lot of people to warm you?

None of us know what the future holds but deep in our hearts we know in Whose hands the future is held. It is the hope, wish and prayers of everyone gathered here this evening, sitting behind you, that God’s richest blessings will be yours.

Easter is so much more than bunnies and colored eggs.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the traditional American trappings of Easter.  As a boy I used to get a solid chocolate Easter bunny each  year.  I’ve always enjoyed coloring hard boiled eggs, first with my mother, then with my daughters and now with my grandchildren.  To this day every time I smell hot vinegar I have a flashback. I hunted Easter eggs in my back yard and love the high pitched scream of excitement when a child finds an egg.

And I miss the Easter bonnets. I know they are hard to see around in a worship service but still, I miss them. So when I say that Easter is about more than bunnies and eggs I am not being a grumpy old man.  I am merely saying that we must be careful not to get so caught up in the trappings of Easter that we tame the radicalness of the Easter message. Easter is about mystery.  It is about Mary and the women silently going to the tomb in the early morning darkness.  It is about the stone rolled away, the grave clothes neatly folded, and a Stranger meeting a couple of disciples on the road to Emmaus. It is about the mystery of miracle and faith. It is about the mystery of life and death and eternity.

After my father died I found in his papers a “faith statement” of sorts. On a time card he wrote, “My variety of Christianity is not one that explains everything. It accepts and appreciates the mystery.”

Yes, Easter is about more than bunnies and eggs. It is about faith.

Source: Glimpse of Grace …”You made it sound easy.”

After worship a parishioner approached me about my sermon on Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 in John’s gospel. “You made it sound easy.” I wasn’t sure if that was an accusation or an observation. In the sermon shared I Linda Cliatt-Wayman’s story about turing around a chronically under-performing, under-functioning inner city school (www.ted.com).

“You made discipleship sound easy,” the parishioner repeated. I weakly protested. “I didn’t mean to. I never said that Ms Cliatt-Wayman’s task was easy. Discipleship certainly isn’t easy. A guy named Bonhoeffer wrote a book about how hard it is to take Jesus seriously. (The Cost of Discipleship)  It’s the hardest work we’ll ever do.”

Walking to my car I reflected upon the short conversation. I thought about the disciples asking Jesus to send the crowd away. Instead Jesus asked them what they had to eat. One of the disciples replied that there was a child in the crowd who had a couple of small fish and some cheap bread. Jesus told them to bring him the fish and bread. He blessed the simple elements and instructed the disciples to distribute them among the crowd. Guess what? There was enough. There was more than enough!

“You made it sound easy.” The words ricocheted in my mind until they settled upon a glimpse of grace. The disciples gave Jesus ALL their resources to Jesus. Not a portion or a proportion but all. When we give all that we have and all that we are to Jesus, He takes it, blesses it and gives it back to us to use in doing the work of the Kingdom.

The hardest thing for we “Westerners” to do, I believe, is to give Jesus our “fish and loaves”…our financial wealth. Like the rich young ruler, we’d rather walk away than follow. Trusting Jesus isn’t easy. Following Him is even harder.

The text message was simple and straight forward. “Bill Thompson died.” I’ve officiated at many funerals over the years. I’ve been the bedside of many people as they passed from this Reality into the Next. Paraphrasing John Donne, I am touched by every person’s death, but Bill’s had a different affect upon me.

I used to have lunch with Bill every three or four weeks when we lived in a small Iowa town. Our lunches were not professional in nature. We simply talked about life. From time to time he would slip into the back of the sanctuary where I preached, abandoning for the weekend his cradle Roman Catholic faith. I last saw Bill fifteen years ago or so at a high school regional basketball game. We hadn’t been in touch for probably a half dozen years prior to that, but when we greeted each other with a “guy-hug” it seemed like we shared a lunch only the week before. We quickly brought each other up to date on what was happening in our respective lives. Then we departed. I didn’t see him again.

I knew that Bill had been sick. I heard it through the grapevine. I should have written him a note or sent a card or made a phone call. I think that he would have appreciated it, but I didn’t do any of those things. I got busy and the thought, the moment left. Then I got the three word text: “Bill Thompson died.” I wished that I had done a better job staying in touch. I wrote a message on the funeral home’s internet memory book, but that is not the same thing.

“Teach us to number our days,” the Psalmist wrote, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Wise advice. It is easy for us to forget that each day is precious. Sometimes it takes the death of a lunch-mate, a long ago friend, to remind us of this.

Glimpses of Grace…Pentecost in a Tornado.

Many years ago, when I was a boy on the cusp of my teenage years, I was in an F-3 tornado. It was on a warm, humid late summer-early fall afternoon shortly after school let out for the day. With a few other students I hung around after school because my mother was attending a meeting. About a half an hour later the sky began to darken as thunderheads rolled in from the northwest and the temperature dropped. A welcomed breeze carried the salty refreshing smell of a summer rain. Large drops soon fell lazily from the sky, then, just as suddenly, they turned into pellets of hail as the winds picked up. Suddenly, without warning, what was a summer thunderstorm turned into a violent swirling wind. I did not hear the deafening train-like roar that is often used to describe tornados. I didn’t hear anything at all but instinct took over as I ran down a hallway dragging a smaller boy by the hand. I later learned that the silence I experienced was due to the tornado’s vacuum effect as it touched down near me.

Within a matter of seconds, the tornado passed but not before destroying my elementary school and a few nearby homes. It’s destruction was precise and life-changing. The school was rebuilt, bigger and better than before. So were the homes. But for close to two decades afterward my heart would skip a beat or two whenever a late summer thunderstorm would roll in.

I think of that afternoon whenever I read the story of the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the disciples at Pentecost. “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind” the writer said. Touched by the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciples were forever changed. Previously fearful, they were emboldened. They left the safety of the place where they huddled and charged into the world proclaiming the life changing message of God’s forgiving love in Jesus Christ.

The life changing power of the Holy Spirit continues to descend upon us “like a violent wind” bringing new life and new possibilities as old structures and ways of doing things are changed, transformed, and remodeled into the likeness of the Kingdom of God. Individuals are also changed; “reborn” from the likeness of the “old Adam” into the image of Christ living into our “adoption” of children of God and heirs of the Kingdom. This transformation is a glimpse of grace.

Glimpse of Grace in an Adoption Court.

Not too long ago I was invited to attend the adoption hearing of a child from one of my daughter’s previous marriage.  He was to be adopted by her husband. Over the course of time the nonbiological parent came to love the child, in no small part, because he loved the child’s mother.

The air in the courtroom was filled with anticipation as the judge asked what seemed like and endless stream of questions to the biological father, who was present via FaceTime, the boy’s mother and the man who wanted to take him as his child. Did the biological father fully understand what he was doing? Did everyone make their own decision without duress? And then, the last question, did the biological father understand that if the judge granted the adoption, that it would be final and irrevocable. There would be no “do overs” or “take backs.” All legal strings of attachment and responsibility would be severed. Everyone said they understood.

At the end of all of the questions, and the presentations by the lawyers–one for the biological father, one for the child and one for the couple seeking the adoption, the judge signed the adoption papers and declared the adoption final. It was done. There were hugs in the courtroom and pictures outside. Watching the whole process I thought to myself that this was one special child. He had been chosen because he is loved.

For everyone involved that morning, one road had come to an end, but another road was just beginning.  In his letter to the Ephesians the Apostle Paul told the church that they were the adopted children of God. He (God) predestined us as adopted sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. (1:5) We’re very special children. We are loved. And because we are loved, we too are adopted, eternally adopted into the household of God. There is a real glimpse of grace.