Commencement

This academic year is truly over. We faculty are weary and glad to see it go, but this morning the student speaker held our attention and gave us reason to hope in those we are sending out.

Annali did not bother with clichés and tired aphorisms. Rather, she addressed the necessary discouragement and despair the believer must experience and face in order to understand hope. And she told her classmates to accept the brokenness of their world and enter it with the hope of Christ to show forth to others.

Perhaps most refreshing, she rejected the common misconception that our campus is a Christian bubble where no one is challenged with brokenness or able to learn our need for the God of hope. Instead, despite the strong Christian influence that exists, it is a place where fallen human beings struggle to find His way to live in a broken world, where believers are challenged to learn what it means to hope, to live in hope, to show forth hope.

For those of us sitting behind her, as she thanked us for our example and exhortations, insistence and forgiveness, encouragement and inspiration, we were reminded of the terrible burden and wondrous privilege of teaching, of the fear and trembling with which we are required to approach this holy honor of having young people within our influence for four of the most significant years of their lives.

May we be found worthy, despite our failings and floundering. May we depend on Him daily, hourly, and never forget the seriousness of our need to live honestly before Him and those who look to us for an example of His loving care.