Special Dog's Commencement Speech

Preface: I posted the following in May of 2014....and have been bringing it back every year since then!

Special Dog's Commencement Speech 

               Once again another year has passed and I wasn't invited by any college or university to be their commencement speaker! So I dreamed a dream and in that dream a very fantastical thing happened. Joe Biden....(Vice President at the time)....was to be the commencement speaker at Harvard University but a couple of his hair plugs fell out at the last minute and he refused to go on stage.  The Ivy League school administrators were frantic in trying to find a replacement. When they heard my name....Special Dog....they thought I must be a rap singer and thus eminently qualified to a give a commencement speech....then I woke up. So I sat down and penned the speech that I would have given had I in fact been invited by Harvard to give their commencement speech. Maybe next year! Here is that speech.... 

               

"A little bit of trivia.....President John Kennedy would be 97 years old today....(he would be nearing 106 today)....if he were still alive....but his 46 year old face in the last year of his presidency is what we remember. I had the privilege of seeing him in person as Senator Kennedy and then presidential candidate Kennedy passed by our Catholic grade school....as they herded us all out to wave to him. (This is 1960)

I recently viewed an old interview with then Governor Ronald Reagan that was taped on June 5th of 1971. The interviewer asked Governor Reagan if he was going to run for president in 1972. Reagan replied....'No....Lord willing I'll complete my second term as governor.' That would make two United States presidents....in a row....Carter and Reagan.....who could naturally use the phrase....'Lord willing.' Abraham Lincoln spoke a very similar phrase in his second inaugural address. No surprise there. 

(Today we tell God what we are going to do....'We're going to keep on winning....winning....winning!')
           
Your parents would remember this....well maybe your grandparents....that magazine sized book....Four Days, The Historical Record Of The Death of President Kennedy. I think that just about everyone had it back in the months and years following that tragic day in November of 1963. In that book the editors reveal what were....'President Kennedy's last official words-the conclusion of the speech he was to have delivered in Dallas.' John Kennedy was to give this speech but never did... for assassins (plural) ended his life.....SPOILER....it wasn't Oswald.

That speech never given by our 35th President concluded with these words....the last official words of President Kennedy....The righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. That Bible excerpt is the last half of the 1st verse of Psalm 127... from the King James Version, which begins with this....Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it. So the full verse is:

Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was nominally religious as was I. He would have respected the Bible and believed those words....but he could not have truly understood their significance,....nor timeliness....nor even seen his own part in attempting to build a city (a country) without the LORD. The 60s were an absolute disaster....the effects of which nearly brought my own life to an end. They produced college professors for the next few decades who gave us many of our problems today. They gave us Barack Obama and the Clintons....two Bush presidents.

(and Donald Trump....Joe Biden....and now Trump again)

It was drizzling and a bit chilly as my wife and son and I walked Cambridge University back in the spring of 2001. I wanted to see where many of the Puritans were educated....one of them was John Harvard....and I wanted to see some of the places where scenes from the Academy Award winning Chariots Of Fire were filmed. The building that housed the White Horse Inn on the grounds of Cambridge was long gone but a small blue plaque hung in the nearest spot possible to that location. That inn was a 16th century English pub where students, Dons and travelers discussed the works of Martin Luther, and out of this discussion came a passion for the hearing of the Word of God which resulted in the English Reformation. 

Young people...find your own White Horse Inn!

(hint...try....whitehorseinn.org)
            

Surely somewhere in America on that bleak or snowy Saturday in early December 1941....a young man sat looking out of a restaurant window....or maybe a coffee shop....with a young lady at his side who was his new bride. They had the world at their fingertips as he was just awarded that treasured college diploma he worked so long and hard for....and she wore the wedding band she had dreamed about since they first met in grade school. They looked into each other's eyes with hardly a care in the world. Oh, the plans they had so much fun making....a small cottage with a white picket fence that someday would keep little ones and maybe a puppy dog from straying as they play.
             

And then the morning came and as they walked into church the somber faces took their joy away for they had not heard the news from that group of islands where the sun shown year round and warm surf slapped the white beaches. America was in the war against evil that they had only given themselves minutes a day to reflect upon. The young bride knew immediately that their dreams would now be put on hold....if they would ever come true. Surely the prayers of all present in that worship service were salted with tears.
             

Not every generation has its hopes interrupted as this generation did on December 7th, 1941....but your generation today may indeed be another one. Love is disappearing in the world....no....worse than that....it has been hijacked by greed....tortured by pride....and what is left is directed to ourselves....and we in America are paying dearly for our dalliances.
           

Do you sometimes feel a void of passion in your life...a meaninglessness that cannot be satisfied by the picture that you paint on your Facebook page? Well, a river of passion flows right by you! Cup your hands and drink from it. Let mercy and peace pass over your palate. A political election will give but one night of elation but the coronation of the King of Kings provides every morning and every evening with a ceaseless ardor that will make you forever thankful. 

If you happen to really see the trouble that we are in here in America....that vision is from God....and He will also give the balm....supply the strength and provide the wisdom to see the joy of redemption even in the darkest hours of this world....and to plan ahead with the full trust that if it be His will it will happen....and if it not be His will you would not want it to happen! Here is the only true hope and change...... "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." 2 Corinthians 5:17." (end of the address)

One does not have to be a PHD, or a celebrity, a statesman, general or financial wizard to relay God's wisdom to graduates. I certainly didn't plan it this way but my later adult life....whether while working or in personal relationships....has been one of taking joy in training or teaching when I was able. The greatest joy of a father is in conversations with....in my case....a son....passing on what I have learned....taking advantage of so much experience and so many mistakes....and most of all pointing him to the most blessed and beautiful majesty and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ!


"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

Animal Farm

                It had been sixty years since I had to read George Orwell's....Animal Farm....in high school....and other than a recurring quote from the book that would come up now and then....I had not thought that much about it....not as much as his other classic....1984. Today I saw the new animated film....Animal Farm....at the theater....so this very short review....is on the movie alone....and not how it relates to Orwell's book. Having said that here goes....
                The reader here is probably more familiar with the director than I am....actor turned director Andy Serkis. The voice cast was impressive....with Glenn Close and Woody Harrelson....and Seth Rogan....who I am also not very familiar with.
                The reviews that I have read so far have not been that good....but not only does that not influence me here....a terrible review at times might make me want to see a film. It depends on what the subject matter might be....for liberal Hollywood tends to pick apart conservative movies.
                 I thought this Animal Farm was a terrific animated movie....and highly I recommend it....but here is what you might think odd....idolatry was more the message than ideology! As I watched the film....neither the Bolshevik Revolution nor Stalin nor anything really that Orwell was commenting on in his book....came to my mind.....for all I saw in my mind was the world today....and leaders and greed and ignorance on both sides!

Shavuot....Or Pentecost

                It's an old joke that I first heard maybe thirty years ago.....there is a community ministerium meeting in an auditorium....and a number of denominations are represented. A fire breaks out in the kitchen.....and a Baptist minister jumps up and yells...."Fire!"....followed up by a Methodist minister who jumps up and yells...."Water!"....followed by a Presbyterian minister who jumps up and yells...."Order!"
                We Presbyterians like to maintain order in everything.....especially Reformed Presbyterians. So we have confessions and catechisms and protocols and rules for this and rules for that. They work out very well....but they have limitations with God who is not confined to everything that we write down. One of those things is with prophecy....and the Jews....and Israel....not to mention blood moons and solar eclipses and Jewish feasts!
                 God uses Jewish feasts and fasts....more after-the-fact than to predict anything. Both Jewish temples were destroyed on the ninth of the Jewish lunar month Av....therefore known as the...Ninth of Av....or Tisha B'Av.....and a lot of other disasters happened on that Jewish date over the centuries and millennia.....and this emphasis on Jewish feasts by God continues....as the massacre in Israel leading to upheaval in the world....happened on the feast of Sukkot. Even this war going on now....which is also bringing turmoil to the world....began only hours after Passover.
                  Donald Trump....was born on a blood moon....and he famously came down that golden escalator into evangelicalism....in the middle of that equally famous tetrad of blood moons on Jewish feasts in 2014/2015. So....scoff if you want....and jump up and yell...."Order!"....but God will continue with His perfect order of things.
                  So having laid the groundwork here....which I do fairly often....the next Jewish major feast begins on Thursday....May 21....it is a one-day feast.....and ends on Saturday....May 23 at nightfall. The feast is commonly called Shavuot in the Hebrew....(three syllables)....or Weeks....the Festival of Weeks.....celebrating two things....the giving of the Torah....or the law....on Mount Sinai....and also the first issues of wheat. The term 'weeks' comes from the feast being fifty days from the sabbath after Passover. It is therefore fifty days. Is this beginning to sound familiar? It is celebrated as Pentecost to Christians....when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in the upper room!
                   Jerusalem at the time was filled with Jews from all over.....celebrating Shavuot....but many of them would go home different.....first fruits of redemption! Whether God uses this Jewish feast in prophecy or not....may He....if it be His will....and to His glory alone....move in our pulpits....and all of us in the pews....to His glory....and our benefit as a people in need of His mercies and graces and discernment!