Christian Men

Do You See Your Calling? VerseVisions Art; Romans 1:1

nobody@vox.com(Mark Lawrence) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:53:27 -0700

Do You See Your Calling? VerseVisions Art; Romans 1:1, originally uploaded by Mark Lawrence.

"Separated unto the Gospel." Romans 1:1

I sometimes get so caught up in trying to be good in the eyes of God. I find myself so preoccupied with my own inner behavior that I lose sight of what God has called me to do first and foremost- proclaim the Gospel.

I justify this by thinking that there is no way that I can be used by God to witness to others until I clean up all of the garbage within myself. The truth is, if I wait until I am personally “holy”, I will never be of any use to God here on earth. God is very interested in reaching and saving His lost children, yet I am more interested in how He can make me more pleasing in my own eyes.

Father God, forgive me for my selfishness and pour into me your passion and urgency to proclaim the Gospel of Salvation through Jesus Christ.

This painting was inspired by the powerful devotions penned and published by Oswald Chambers in the early 1900’s. His powerful book, My Utmost for His Highest, continues to touch my life and draw me closer to Jesus. I hope that this art and verse do the same for you!

Read the devotional from My Utmost For His Highest that inspired this work.

Inspiring contemporary Christian paintings by artist Mark Lawrence of Alpharetta, Georgia.

Giclee Fine Art Prints of this VerseVisions® work are available in the VerseVisions Gallery.

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Failure; A Step to Success

nobody@vox.com(JudgeBob) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:31:39 -0700

Failing is one of those things we hate in life. Its also one of those things that make the best teachers for life. This is a conundrum. If you go through life trying to avoid pain you wind up avoiding the best life has to offer. It is only through the experience of failure that you learn the value of success and in general unless you are willing to try, and try again you will be entirely reliant on the success and benevolence of others. While a certain amount of wisdom is required to make use of the lessons failure has to teach us, this sort of wisdom is not a rare commodity. You are capable of succeeding, just don't expect to be successful on the first attempt. Its a very rare talent in any one skill that can be successful with the first attempt more often than not.

failure

Edward de Bono:

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Elbert Hubbard:

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.

Oscar Wilde:

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Robert F. Kennedy:

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Thomas Alva Edison:

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Alva Edison:

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Wallace Stegner:

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

William M. Winans:

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.

Winston Churchill:

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Failures are constituted in one of three ways. 1. Never trying. The main reason most people fail is due to never starting. Whether for fear or laziness or lack of incentive and most notably, lack of a vision. 2. Trying once or 10,000 times and giving up never to try it again. Whether for frustration or switching priorities, quitting is certain failure. 3. This is the least of the reasons though it would seem counterintuitive. Most things we do today were once impossible until somebody followed a vision to see it through. However, there are a few things that we either don't have the technological advancement to get it done or what we've envisioned flies in the face of physics and really is impossible. First priority toward a goal is vision. If you can't envision the goal, your goal will keep moving back so that you never acheive the goal and never realize success.

Requirements for success are 1 learn everything you can about your goal or vision. 2 start. 3. learn from the failures 4 keep trying.

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Hard Times

nobody@vox.com(JudgeBob) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:56:35 -0700

I miss Granny. Granny meant a lot to me. Grandmothers usually mean a lot to their grandkids and I'm not denigrating those relationships, but my Granny was more involved in my life than most grandmas are. My folks divorced when it was still a shame to be a divorcee. Back when the divorce courts were held in regular court and hadn't yet made their mistakes and assumed standards for their decision making process. My folks battled hard for custody of their four kids. Threats were made, guns pulled, middle of the night tug of wars with me as the rope. So its no surprise that we were put in the custody of others. I won't go into the details but we wound up in the care of my Grandparents for a while and again at a later while.

Talking about food in the Groceries article started me reminiscing about living with Granny and Pa and hearing the stories of the Great Depression and how they struggled to survive. Life in rural Oklahoma is good. Its good not because there are lots of jobs and getting ahead is easy, it ain't. Its good because people slow down and meet with one another. Its good to sit on the front porch of a ratty old house and hear where someone is coming from. Granny and Pa were doing good in those days. They'd struggled through the Depression, they'd been part of the migrant worker force going to California to pick fruit. They'd worked for a rich man for many years and had finally put together enough to buy their own place and then a bit more to start their own farm and when the new dam was built and flooded all the farmland they'd been renting, they took their savings and invested in ranchland and cattle. Not bad for an illiterate man and a housewife. At this point they invested in breed stock race horses. Just a couple of good names and bloodlines.

So while Pa was out tending the cattle or horse business we'd be sitting on the front porch of Granny's newly remodeled 3 bedroom house out on Hwy 69 and sipping at tall glasses of iced tea or lemonade in the humid 90* and up temperature with the Jar Flies making a racket in the Maple trees in the front yard. It was just the sort of peace a kid from the divorce wars needed. Life is hard sometimes, and sometimes you feel like your getting the worst of it. Talking with Granny about how hard it was helped me put a little perspective on hard. Usually, people who've known hard are closer than you think. You'd think, looking at their nice house and successful ventures that they didn't know hard. Everybody over 40 from rural Oklahoma knew hard. There was a common bond between the people of the mountain because they'd looked after each other during hard. Granny had lots of visitors who would stop by on their way to town or back. I didn't know why or even that this was special. As a kid I'd assumed this was normal. In fact they felt it was normal. Looking back now, I can see that it was special.

I don't know if Granny knew what she was giving me when she would tell me of the struggles they'd had to make it. I don't mean becoming successful, I mean surviving from meal to meal. I recommend everybody go out and rent the old black and white classic, "The Grapes of Wrath." That movie was set in my home town as the starting point for the migrant workers going off to California to look for work. It depicts a dust storm which Granny related to me from personal memory. Stuffing rags under the doors and covering your mouth and nose so you could breath inside your house. When the dust settled, planting a garden just to watch the seedlings wither and die. Not having enough money to buy a bag of pinto beans. Starting off your marriage with a single fry pan and wooden spoon and nothing else. After the winter snow melted, not another drop of precipitation all year. Leaving your home and traveling half way across the continent in an old run down jilopy that you can't count on to get you there or back and not a cent to spare. Once there, being considered the lowest cast and living in tarpaloun camp communities and competing with others near starving for the few jobs available. The lawlessness of those camps and men dieing in intercamp fights.

They had five kids but the oldest was lost when he was accidentally bounced off the bed by his younger brother and suffered a concussion. Granny knew hard. She told me about struggling to put anything together for her family to eat. Water biscuits are made with flour and water. No milk, no salt. Just plain four and water. One of my favorite dishes was born out of necessity. Half a cup of milk, sugar, water, and unsweetened chocolate makes a chocolate syrup they called chocolate gravy. We'd pour this over buttered rolls or biscuits. Its a real art to make this because you have to cook it until just before it makes candy. My Dad verified this, she said there were days when there was nothing but pinto beans and you were proud to have them. There were days when you were so tired of them you preferred to do without.

Dad related more stories about their struggles. He and his older brother were the chief bread winners in the family for a number of years. They would hire out to train horses to be ridden and while training them in that one day, they'd use them to track down and bring home stray catlle for their neighbors. A dollar a head for the cattle and a dollar a day for the horses. At the end of that day, the horses knew the commands and knew their jobs. This was when my Dad and his brother were between the ages of 10 and 15 years old. After the drought was over, migrating to California for summer work had become normal. Dad was driving a bulldozer for a while and laying irrigation pipe for a while. This is when he met my mother. It was such a shock for her when she went home with him the first time and discovered they still didn't have indoor plumbing. She felt she'd moved into,,, well her prejudices came out against the Okies. That was 1959. Within 5 years, everybody on the mountain had indoor plumbing installed or had built new houses. If you've never visited an outhouse, its a bit like a portapotty made out of wood. Some have more than one seat called two holers or 5 holers depending on the number of seats.

In this day and age, in this culture, hard is a relative term. Hard is having to choose between paying the house payment or the two car payments. Which can we more easily do without? Hard is deciding if we announce bankruptcy or wait and see if the house sells. and that's the folks who are struggling with their finances. Others consider it hard when their perverse relationship isn't accepted by the mainstream. Others consider it hard when they think the government is spying on their e-mails, phone calls and library records. Hard is studying for an algebra test.

Those may be considered difficulties, but they are not hard. Hard is having two parents more interested in hurting each other than in seeing to your welfare when you're eight years old and have three younger siblings who look to you for council and provision. Hard is when you are sent to lay your life on the line and then the country doesn't appreciate it. Hard is telling the nation about real threats to their culture and system of governance and many in powerful positions work to dissuade belief and blame you for the threats. Hard is meeting your son at the army hospital who is being treated for 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 20% of his body and has a gaping hole in the side of his head. All of us think we know hard. Its those who really do know hard that we value when we come to know real hard. Their council is timeless and a real help when all perspective is lost in the depths of hard that we've never known.

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How Could I Not Know?, VerseVisions Art; Acts 26:15

nobody@vox.com(Mark Lawrence) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:40:19 -0700

How Could I Not Know?, VerseVisions Art; Acts 26:15, originally uploaded by Mark Lawrence.

"Who art Thou, Lord?" Acts 26:15

Rather than speaking to me with His voice, I hear God most clearly through my circumstances. I read His word daily seeking instruction and guidance. Reading and meditating seems to be the most rational way that I have convinced myself He would talk to me. I translate what I read into what I think is how He wants to order the steps of my life.

Yet as I look at the circumstances and events unfolding before me I see Him communicating to me in a much more powerful way. God is teaching me that he wants me to know Him and serve Him not by how my spirit interprets His word; but rather in complete and meek surrender to His lordship over me. I am realizing that the Bible only begins to reveal the awesome love and plans that He has for my life. If only I can surrender and trust Him…

Read the devotional from My Utmost For His Highest that inspired this work.

Original and inspiring modern Christian art work and encouragement by Mark Lawrence of Alpharetta, Georgia.

Giclee Fine Art Prints of this painting are available at the VerseVisions Gallery.

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The Dilemma of Obedience, VerseVisions Art; 1 Samuel 3:15

nobody@vox.com(Mark Lawrence) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:38:02 -0700

The Dilemma of Obedience, VerseVisions Art; 1 Samuel 3:15, originally uploaded by Mark Lawrence.

“And Samuel was afraid to tell Eli the vision." 1 Samuel 3:15

Do you remember the last time that you absolutely knew that God was speaking to you? I think that He is always trying to get my attention, but it seems that the only way times that I am really focused on listening are when I am under tremendous pressure. When my life is in the furnace-of-affliction I am desperate to hear His voice and instruction.

I am in one of those seasons now in my life. I know that God is speaking loudly to me. My life is upside down and I seem helpless to be able to get my footing. The vision in my spirit however is very clear. God is in absolute control of every event and trial that is allowed to buffet me. As a child of God I am not a victim of these circumstances in my life.

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15

Read the devotional from My Utmost For His Highest that inspired this work.

Original and inspiring modern Christian art work and encouragement by Mark Lawrence of Alpharetta, Georgia.

Giclee Fine Art Prints of this painting are available at the VerseVisions Gallery.

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Prager on Love

nobody@vox.com(JudgeBob) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:04:51 -0700

For those of you who are not familiar with Dennis Prager, I wanted to bring a sample of his work. His clarity of thought and ability to express those thoughts are renowned in matters of morality. He is very religious though not Christian, he speaks at Christian venues all the time. He is Jewish and teaches the Torah on a regular basis in Synagogue. I listen to him daily on his three hour talk show Monday through Friday. Here is his take on the subject of love. He doesn't bother to separate the four different meanings our concept of love has been translated from. He simply approaches the subject from the modern perspective which is based in the ancient traditions of nearly all cultures.

In my past studies on the topic from the Bible, I discovered that our English single word to express the concepts of what took four different words in the Greek and simalarly in the Hebrew, has facilitated our confusing verticle and horizontal love. In this article Dennis describes the relationship of equals and draws a comparison of differences between love of authority to its charges. ie. the love of a man and woman or between adult same-sex friends as opposed to the love of a parent for their child and God for His people. I wanted to expand just a little on Dennis' thought about unconditional love, so I will add a paragraph at the end of Dennis' article.

With Valentine's Day approaching, some thoughts on love.

1. The love relationship between a man and a woman is unique. There is no love like it for two primary reasons: First, it is the love of equals -- all other love relationships (except same-sex friends) are between unequals. Second, it is sexual.

2. Because it is the only love relationship between equals (again except for friends), it is the only relationship in which it is a good thing to seek to be loved. In other relationships, it is bad to seek to be loved. Parents who seek to be loved by their children will inevitably do a poor job as a parent. They may even damage their child. Leaders who seek to be loved by the public will be ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. One can only lead if he does not yearn to be loved. A teacher who tries to be loved by her students will likewise fail. Parents, leaders, teachers have jobs to do, and seeking to be loved compromises their ability to do those jobs properly. They should seek to do the right thing, and doing the right thing often means being not loved, even hated. If they seek any response from those they lead, it should be respect, not love.

But in the love of equals -- i.e., the love between a man and a woman and the love of friends -- it is not only all right to seek to be loved, it is a good thing. Taking the love of a spouse or friend for granted is perhaps the single greatest cause of marital divorce and the breakup of friendships. "What can I do to ensure his/her continuing love?" is a wonderful thing to keep in mind.

3. That is one reason the notion of "unconditional love" is foolish. The fact is, we all earn love, and it is a good thing to have to do so. What possible good purpose can the belief that your spouse loves you unconditionally -- i.e., no matter how you act -- serve? If we believe our spouse loves us no matter what we do, what would motivate us to be on our best behavior at all times? Why be kind even when we are in a foul mood? Why work to stay attractive if he will love me no matter how much I neglect how I look? Why continue to pay attention to her -- like regularly calling her from work -- if I know that even if I ignore her, she will continue to love me?

Unconditional love is not a good idea. I don't know where it originated, but I am quite certain it's relatively recent, a product of an age that has put primary importance on feelings. With the possible exception of a parent's love for a young child, unconditional love is not a good idea among people, and it's probably not a good idea concerning God's love for us. I am familiar with no biblical basis for the notion that God loves us no matter how much cruelty and evil we engage in (God's love of His Chosen People, Israel, is specifically depicted as conditional upon Israel's behavior), or for the notion that God loved Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa equally. Frankly, I would be disappointed in such a God. It renders Him a love machine whose love cannot be affected by our behavior, not a loving being who is affected by how we act. It renders His love amoral. And it prevents us from growing up.

4. "God is love" is a half-truth. God is many things, and love is only one of them. One can just as accurately say "God is punishment" or "God is justice" or "God is truth."

5. We show love to those we love by doing what they consider loving, not necessarily by what we consider loving. A young man once called my radio show and told me he was not planning to give his girlfriend flowers or even a card, or to do anything special for her on Valentine's Day. His reason was that he considered Valentine's Day a creation of American capitalism -- just another way to sell cards, flowers and gift items and increase companies' profits. I asked him if his girlfriend agreed with him about the insignificance of Valentine's Day. He said she didn't, that, in fact, she thought it important that he do something special for her on Valentine's Day.

I then asked him if he considered birthdays special and expected his girlfriend to do or get something special for him on his birthday. He said he did. How would he react, I then asked, if his girlfriend dismissed the significance of birthdays the way he dismissed the importance of Valentine's Day and ignored his birthday? He acknowledged that he would be hurt.

Just as his girlfriend should make his birthday special whether or not she believes in the importance of birthdays, he should make Valentine's Day special for her whether or not he deems the day special. We show love to the other in the way he or she understands it, not the way we do.

6. Finally, to the extent that emotions can be measured, it may be difficult to say whether love or hate is the stronger emotion. But this can be said with certainty: Among the psychologically healthy and morally decent, there is no comparison. Love is the most powerful force in our life. And the more the merrier.

End of Dennis' article.

Dennis expressed an understanding of God's love to be more closely to that of equals. While not implying that we are in any way equal to God, this love description is accurate if incomplete. According to the scriptures, God views us as both children and a bride. While we are yet sinners we are His children. As we become the devoted we grow into a people in line with His will. As we mature in this spiritual sense we move from being children to friends of God. As friends of God we become eligible for partnership with God. This is again, not to suggest we are ever equal with God, but a match for co-love as compared to that between a husband and wife. This is the whole premise of the classic book by Madam Guyon titled, "Song of the Bride" which is a commentary on the wisdom book in the Bible, "The Song of Solomon." If you've had trouble making heads or tails of this poetic prose translated from its original language, then I suggest you grab a copy of "Song of the Bride" and read both books side by side. You won't be disappointed.

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A Life Worth Living

nobody@vox.com(JudgeBob) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:24:04 -0700

Fox News Sunday devoted the entire program this week to a tribute to Tony Snow. I sat through the entire program, misty eyed at the guests' remembrances of Tony's care, personality, warmth, good spirits under pressure, and many talents. Having heard the testimony of friends, colleagues and even foes, I believe the man to be every bit the character we most desire in ourselves. I recite another poem, this one written not too long after we entered Iraq and designed it to anwer the many critics of that move and those associated with carrying out the orders.

A Warrior’s Request

Most citizens will never know
The value of this nation’s creed
Or the fount from which it flows
The courage of a special breed

We went in there with hopes and dreams
And when one of us would fall
All the rest of us forever cling
To the memory of us all

Freedom and liberty aren’t free
So live a life worth dying for
Liberty’s price is responsibility
Freedom’s price….. I freely bore

I vowed to you my brother in arms
I would stand in your stead
And now I’ve suffered fatal harm
Let my sacrifice brand your heart and head

That you will make your life matter
And live the best life you can
Shed life’s clap trap and clatter
With purpose, live by the Master’s plan

Freedom and liberty aren’t free
So live a life worth dying for
Liberty’s price is responsibility
Freedom’s price….. I freely bore

Judge Right
I believe Tony did live a life worth dieing for. I've looked up a commencement speech Tony gave to a graduating class of Catholic University students and after reading it, believe it to be a summing up of his life, faith, will, and hope. It is well worth the read.

118th Annual Commencement Address: "Reason, Faith, Vocation"
Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary
Basilica of the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception
May 12, 2007

Your excellency Archbishop Wuerl, President O’Connell, members of the board of trustees, members of the administration, distinguished faculty and staff, graduating students — and families who paid for [their education] — honored guests, Dr. Williams, thank you one and all.

This is a wonderful thing, a graduation: And I hope your lives will be filled with many more – not in terms of diplomas, but in the sense that you will have escalating accomplishments throughout your days. I’ve been asked to aid in that quest by giving you some advice, so here it goes.

First, live boldly. Live a whole life. I have five tips for pulling this off and – let me warn you — they’ve all been road tested. I learned the old-fashioned way, through trial and error.

Number one, think. You’ve got a diploma now, you’ve got a brain. Put them to work.

Catholic University has equipped you with an extraordinary and valuable tool. It’s taught you how to learn. This handy skill never wears out, so please use it all the time. After all, the human mind is a wondrous thing. It’s restless, always eager for action, always raring for places to go. While you’ve been here you have developed analytical skills, but they alone won’t get you through. You’re smart but we humans are also gullible. Really gullible. Just ask the serpent in Eden. Therefore you’re going to need to develop some discernment, some common sense.

My grandmother, who was reared in hardscrabble rural Kentucky, used to lecture me all the time about the perils of book-learning. I used to scoff at that, until I got out on my own. I still remember living in my first apartment, waking up in the morning to a weird muffled popping sound. I padded out to the kitchen and felt something cold on my scalp. I looked up and saw viscous orange goo dripping from the ceiling. See, Grandma would have known not to let frozen orange juice sit on the counter thawing without letting the cap loose. Common sense.

Heed the counsel of your elders, including your parents. I guarantee you, they have made some howling mistakes if, like me, they were in college in the ’70s and ’80s. They probably haven’t owned up to them, but they might now, because they want to protect you. You see, they know that you are leaving the nest. And now that you’re leaving the nest, predators soon will begin to circle. Some are going to try to take your money, but the really clever ones are going to tempt you to throw your life away. They’ll appeal to your pride and vanity – or worse, to your moral ambition. After all, there’s nothing more subversive than the offer to become a saint. So think things through. Be patient. If somebody tries to give you a hard sell, you know they’re peddling snake oil; don’t buy it. If something’s not worth pondering, it is certainly not worth doing. And if your gut tells you something’s fishy, trust your gut.

You know, hucksters perform an unintended service. Like everybody here, I’m sure you’ve all been conned. I am such a sucker that I get conned all the time. What happens is they make you look in the mirror and assess honestly the person on the other side. Now all of us love to delude ourselves, making excuses. But you know, the more we resist being honest and doing an honest evaluation, the sillier we behave. If you don’t believe it, think of any swinger you have ever seen in your life. Socrates was right: Know thyself.

But see, there’s more. Once you’ve gotten past the mirror phase, then things begin to get really interesting. You begin to confront the truly overwhelming question: Why am I here? And that begins to open up the whole universe, because it impels you to think like the child staring out at the starry night: “Who put the lights in the sky? Who put me here? Why?” And pretty soon you are thinking about God. Don’t shrink from pondering God’s role in the universe or Christ’s. You see, it’s trendy to reject religious reflection as a grave offense against decency. That’s not only cowardly. That’s false. Faith and reason are knitted together in the human soul. So don’t leave home without either one.

Second recommendation: Go off-road.

It’s tempting to search for comfort, but don’t play it too safe. Every once in a while you’ve got to get yourself into a mess, a scrape, a circumstance that makes you look around and gasp, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” You’ll shudder and tremble, but you will have no choice but to rise to the occasion. Let’s be honest. Most of us spend a great deal of our lives over our heads in one way or another. Don’t reject it, don’t resist it, don’t deny it. Just make the most out of it.

You see, when you go off-road, when you start taking risks, your ambitions and limits get to know each other up close and personal. You’ll also learn never to try to do anything all by yourself. You’re going to need help. Lots of it. Don’t be bashful. Ask. Everybody you know harbors a secret desire – maybe an unsecret desire – to do something good for somebody else. For every important venture or adventure in your life, you’re going to dangle one foot over the abyss of uncertainty and ask, “Can I do this? Am I up to it?” You’re going to have to summon a little faith in God, your friends, strangers, and, most of all, in yourself.

When you’re going off-road, don’t be content with what you know now. The reason you came to college is you didn’t know very much. Now you know a little more. But the challenge is to keep building on it. So try something completely different — I don’t care, learn something trivial. Learn it well. Sing karaoke, if you dare. Learn to fix something in the house. Help out at a homeless shelter. Start a rock ‘n’ roll band.

My wife hopes I’ll just venture out and start cleaning up my study.

And be ready for the unplanned educational experiences. Sometimes they’re the very best of all. If fact, the most revealing moments are the ones that are unplanned. Practice a little daring. I’m not talking about driving with your eyes closed. But something that’s tantalizing because it raises the question of whether this particular activity and goal lies inside or outside the limit of your abilities.

Last summer we were in Crawford, Texas, with the president. And you know the president has this love of riding a bicycle off-road. It’s a treacherous and crazy thing, plunging down the hills, over seeming cliffs, ravines, up rocks. He loves it. Well, I said, “I might like to try that sometime.” I was just, you know, trying to make nice. I was trying to kiss up to the boss.

So the first time out at the ranch, he said, “Snow, you ready to ride?”

I looked around and said, “Well, I don’t have any shorts, sir.”

And so he said, “Hey, Jerry, do you got shorts?”

“Yes sir.” Hands out a pair of shorts.

“Well, all I have are these running shoes,” I protested.

“They’ll do.”

He hands off a t-shirt so off we go. Now, again, it’s an adventure because the president, being aerobic in everything he does, plunges into this with absolute incredible vigor, and I thought I was doing all right at the beginning. I’m chuffing along at the back of the pack, respectfully (and also because I was the worst rider). But there was always that lingering fear. At one point he says, “Okay, you’re going to need your brakes here. It’s straight down, it’s boulders. Oh, and the other side, it’s a cliff. Watch out.”

We finally get to this place where the road parts. You go off-road and there’s a drop of about 15 or 20 feet, it rises up again and then goes around the curve. The president goes down and goes “Woo hoo!” Person behind him goes down and goes “Woo hoo!” I’m in the back and I go “Waaaah.” But there I am.

Okay, where am I? The limits of the abilities. Which side of the line am I on? Well, I go down. It’s great! I’m going full-speed. And then all of a sudden coming up a tree appears right in the middle of the path. Ooof. Everybody hears it.

“Snow, you okay back there?”

“Yes sir. Just hit a tree.”

“Okay, well come on then.”

I made the rest of the trip with a wobbly front tire which had been bent up in the encounter.

The point’s simple. When a chance presents itself, take a prudent and interesting risk. If it doesn’t work out, that is okay. Don’t worry about that, either. You see, God presents blessings in unexpected packages. Don’t overlook them. Remember: no guts, no glory.

Third: Commit.

This is a way of talking about faith. American culture likes to celebrate the petulant outcast, the smart-aleck with the contempt for everything and faith in nothing. Snarky mavericks. The problem is these guys are losers. They have signed up for an impossible mission. Because they’ve decided they’re going to create all the meaning in their lives. They’ve either decided that no moral law exists or they will be the creator, the author of those laws. Now one road leads to complete and total anarchy. Life is solitary, nasty, brutish and short. The other is to insanity, since it requires playing God. We know in our hearts, intuitively, from our first years as children, that the universe unfolds with a discernable order and that moral laws, far from being convenient social conventions, are firm and unalterable. They predate us, they will survive us. Rather than admitting our weakness a lot of times, we just decide we’ll try to get by. And maybe rather than giving God credit, we’ll try to look for a cheap substitute.

Walk into a bookstore, you’ll know what I mean. The shelves are groaning underneath the trendy tomes promising salvation — medicine balls, herbs, purges, all sorts of weird stuff. In politics, there’s a variant that elevates government to the status of God. It says that it is the source of love. It ought to be the recipient of your tithes, but government, while it does pursue compassionate ends, cannot be loving and personal. It treats all of us as completely equal rather than uniquely divine. The point is you can’t escape the question of God and you can’t escape the question of commitments.

When it comes to faith, I’ve taken my own journey. You will have to take your own. But here’s what I know. Faith is as natural as the air we breathe. Religion is not an opiate, just the opposite. It is the introduction to the ultimate extreme sport. There is nothing that you can imagine that God cannot trump. As Paul said “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And once you realize that there is something greater than you out there, then you have to decide, “Do I acknowledge it and do I act upon it?” You have to at some point surrender yourself. And there is nothing worthwhile in your life that will not at some point require an act of submission. It’s true of faith and friendship. It is a practical passage [of the Bible], especially to marriage.

Tolstoy once said all happy marriages are happy in the same way and here’s what he meant. When both people commit, when they say, “You and I are bound together, forever, period, no questions, no codicils, no pre-nups, no escape clauses,” then all of a sudden, the temptations become irrelevant, and the glories become possible.

There is nothing like the pleasure of being a parent. Waking up the next morning to somebody whose breath has become the echo of your heartbeat. Trust me on this, it does not get any better. Commit.

Next, get out. (Your parents are probably saying that, too.)

You are about to encounter a world larger than you know with peaks, valleys, pits and precipices that you cannot possible imagine. You’re going to work long hours. You’ll eat pizza at four in the morning. You’ll try to find love in the weirdest places. You’ll audition personalities, outfits and styles until something seems to fit but eventually the way you’re going to craft your legacy is predictable. You will stamp your imprint on other people’s hearts. You’re not going to get to do that writing in front of a computer.

I’ve been informed by my teenage daughter that there’s a new trend in high school now: dating. Only it’s a peculiar kind of dating because the “datees” do not actually spend time in each other’s presence. Instead they conduct their courtship online. Now technology invites us to build communities out of electrons rather than blood and flesh and I’m just encouraging you, please understand the difference between a closed parenthesis followed by a colon, and a smile. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot kiss a cursor.

Now, the world can be a frightening place, and sometimes a computer may seem to provide refuge, but don’t do it. We also try to hide in other ways. By looking away from the panhandler around the corner or ignoring the fact that somebody is berating someone for no reason at all. What you have to do is learn those adult wiles that I was telling you about but don’t give up the child in you. When kids see injustice, they mention it. “Daddy, why is that man screaming at his wife?” They ask about the things we pretend not to see and we have to step up to. So, when it comes to the world, engage it in every possible way. Don’t be chicken. Get dirt under your fingernails. Scrape your knees. Laugh … a lot … at yourself. Trust me, if you don’t, others will do if for you. But don’t shrink from the pain and the poignancy and aches because they’re essential. They bring us together. They are a part of our experiences. They enliven everything you do but they cannot work their magic until you leave the computer screen and get out that front door.

Finally, love. How trite is that? But it’s everything. It separates happiness from misery. It separates the full life from the empty life. To love is to acknowledge that life is not about you. I want you to remember that: It’s not about you. It’s a hard lesson. A lot of people go through life and never learn it. It’s to submit willingly, heart and soul, to things that matter. Love is not melodrama. You don’t purchase it, you don’t manufacture it. You build it.

Every time I buy something gaudy for my wife she says, “Oh that’s nice,” and then it goes away someplace. The love letters she keeps; I don’t know where the jewelry is.

Love springs from small deeds, the gestures that say casually and naturally “I care.” That acknowledge what’s special about somebody else. If somebody’s smarter, quicker, better, prettier, wiser than you, tell them. Learn from them. Don’t be jealous. Glory in it.

Now the reason that I talk about love is it pulls together the strands of the other tips I’ve already given you. I’ll give you some examples, another presidential story. I traveled with the president last Wednesday to Greensburg, Kansas. Now 10 days ago, that town was small, pretty and whole. But within minutes on a Friday, a giant tornado reduced Greensburg to splinters. Once-nice homes now lie in matchstick heaps. The trees stretch their barren, barkless limbs toward the sky. It looks like Hiroshima, but with grass all around. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I ran into a guy who hadn’t had a shower in five days because the water is not back on, and he motioned for me to come up. He just wanted to tell me a story.

He’s a plumber. And just the week before, they put a brand new boiler in the local school. Well, the school had been leveled and the boiler was just a hunk of twisted metal. He came and he said, “I got a call from the people who sold it to me. They said they saw what happened and said ‘Don’t worry about the boiler. When the time comes, we’re going to replace it.’ ” Then he stopped and said, “You know what else they did? They said they’re sending me a truck. They said, ‘We saw what happened, we know you lost your truck. The one we’re sending you isn’t new but it works great.’ ” And then he stood there, surrounded by the splintered homes and Halloween trees, and just cried. He’s crying and he reached his arms out and he hugged me. He said, “Thanks.” See, here’s somebody who let somebody else help. He let somebody else into his life. He went off-road in a different kind of way, baring himself, and then he decided to pass on the favor.

Think not only of what it means to love but what it means to be loved. I have a lot of experience with that. Since the news that I have cancer again, I have heard from thousands and thousands of people and I have been the subject of untold prayers. I’m telling you right now: You’re young [and you feel] bullet-proof and invincible. [But] never underestimate the power of other people’s love and prayer. They have incredible power. It’s as if I've been carried on the shoulders of an entire army. And they had made me weightless. The soldiers in the army just wanted to do a nice thing for somebody. As I mentioned, a lot of people — everybody out here — wants to do that same thing.

To love is to place others before you and to make their needs your priority. Do it. When you put somebody else at the center of the frame, your entire world changes, and for the better. You begin to find your own place in the world. When you’re drawn into the lives of others, you enter their problems, their hopes, their dreams, their families. They whisk you down unimagined corridors, toward possibilities that had been hidden to you before. So resolve to do little things for others. You don’t know where they’re going to lead but then again, you don’t have any idea where your life is going to lead. When I was your age, I had long hair, a beard and thought of myself as a socialist. You are going to pinball all over the place, from experience to experience, job to job. And I want you to remember that you’ve got company. And that if you engage them with heart and mind, with faith and energy, you are going to find yourself on a cresting wave. It’ll carry you forward and it’ll push you under water from time to time. And some day in the dim and distant future, when you’re looking back at it, you’re not going to think about your car or your career or your gold watch. You’ll think about a chewed-up teddy bear you had as a baby or maybe your child’s smile on a special Christmas morning. The only things that are sure to endure are the artifacts of love. So go out and build as many as you can.

And finally this: Wherever you are and whatever you do, never forget at this moment, and every moment forward, you have a precious blessing. You’ve got the breath of life. No matter how lousy things may seem, you’ve got the breath of life. And while God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.

Let me make a confession: I’ve never been happier than I am today, not because I got this wonderful, fancy degree. But because the tips that I’ve been sharing with you are leading me toward my next graduation. You see, 30 years after I got my Bachelor of Arts, I’m just like you. I aspired to new graduations and I’m just as excited about the future. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, none of us ever stops taking baby steps. Be humble, be alive, be awake. Take each new step as if it were the first. Then take another. And when you tumble, as you will, when a kind hand reaches out to pick you up, smile, say “Thanks” and give back to them. It may not give you a whole life, but it’ll sure get you started.

Thanks.

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