You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you”¦ you’re nothing special.
Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!] And now you’ve conquered high school”¦ and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building”¦
But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore….
Read it all or you can watch it all on video there instead.
The only thing missing would be the encouragement to seek God in everything for without Him as a guiding principle all the other will be much more difficult and lonely no matter how well intentioned.
I loved the You Tube video!! What a gift for these graduates.
Good grief! Imagine having been taught by him every day at school. How utterly exhausting, just like a talking book of Proverbs. A severe case of Teacheritis.
What is so wrong with watching parrots skating on Youtube or cats doubling as alarm clocks?
This is marvelous. A few years ago [i]Mars Hill[/i] had a segment about the effects of telling every person how remarkable and special they are. Don’t get me wrong – we are all special in that the God of all creation made us and loves us – but we are easily lulled into believing we are wonderful. This is funny and terribly true.
First two thirds is provocative and witty. Last third is “Oh Captain! My Captain!” romantic tosh.
First two thirds provocatively informs the graduates just how ordinary they are but the speaker is unable to sustain this motif, and instead of speaking of ordinary virtue in ordinary lives, veers into an rousingly expressivist “truly, madly, deeply” conclusion.
And, yet, driver8 he comes just to the edge of the mystery which brings us to Christ (without, I would suspect, either wanting to or even realizing he has done so): “Selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself”. It is barely even a shuffle from there to arriving at dying to one’s self in order to live. He ends not with, “You are not special”; rather, he ends with, “The sweetest joys of life, then, come with the recognition that you are not special – because everyone is.”
My two now just barely-sixteen year old twin girls got some sort of bee in their identical-DNA-bonnets to go to Zimbabwe to do the work of the Kingdom for this month – June, 2012. They planned, they organized and they worked [b][i]HARD[/i][/b] for a full year to raise money, inspiring five other teens to join them. All seven worked as a group, worked individually (and saved their money instead of buying more songs on iTunes and more clothes at the local mall), then solicited donations during the past two months. God’s hand has been overwhelming – to the point of many tears on my part – in facilitating this – in terms of their growth, their dedication and the astounding generosity of people who earn far less than my wife and I do. They are now in Bulawayo working at an orphanage, a soup kitchen, leading a mini-AWANA, preparing for a VBS and working in a ministry to child-headed-households.
So … what is my point? It is that we must die to live, we must lose our lives to save them – and this speaker, though I doubt he meant to, led these students to the edge of this truth. One can only pray – indeed, maybe we [b]MUST[/b] pray – that the Spirit inspire them to take that obvious next step to know the Author of their salvation and He who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs.