Would you like to know what a group of students, faculty and community members identified as God’s top four agenda priorities for our world and our university? For the past two weeks our House of Prayer has been focusing on “Seeking God’s Agenda.” The premise to that quest is simply that the goal of the Christian’s prayer life is to embrace God’s agenda as your own agenda. (Have you noticed—so much of our praying focuses on our own agendas for ourselves, our needs, our wants, our problems, our desperations. Nothing wrong with bringing those to God, to be sure. But the great prayers of the ancient scriptures reveal a compelling focus on the divine agenda first.)
But then, coming to a sense of agreement as to what the divine agenda might be isn’t really a complicated task, is it? For example, if I asked you to list right now what you believe God’s most important priorities are in his agenda for this university or for your own life, for that matter, would it be hard to come up with them?
After prayerfully preparing our hearts through music and reflection, I was surprised at how quickly last week these agenda items were suggested by individuals in our prayer fellowship. If God has a prayer list, what do you suppose is at the top of that list? Here were their responses: #1—that this world of lost sinners might be saved (Isaiah 45:22); #2—that all might come to personally know Him (Jeremiah 9:23, 24); #3—that Christ might be lifted up and draw all to him (John 12:32); and, #4—that God’s name might be glorified upon the earth (Revelation 14:7).
Wouldn’t you agree? I do. After all, what would God want more than to save every lost heart on this campus, and this world? Go down that list of four agenda items—is there one you would take off that list? Sure, you may think of one or two you’d want to add to that list.
But here’s the proposition: what would happen if you took these four divine agenda items and began weaving them into your own private praying? What could be more fulfilling than to know that what is preoccupying your praying are the very longings that preoccupy the heart of God? After all, “can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3)
On March 4, 1933, the newly elected president of the United States delivered his inaugural address to the nation. Four sentences into that address, Franklin Roosevelt uttered the words that have lived long beyond his four-term presidency: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” So spoke the nation’s leader in that dark hour of economic despair. Because that’s what leaders are raised up to do, is it not? To call the people, the populace, the public to renewed confidence and hope for the journey yet ahead, to remind them of their “rendezvous with destiny.” That’s precisely what an aged leader named Moses did in an ancient book that becomes the grist for our worship journey this new season. Deuteronomy is in fact the farewell address (no doubt the longest farewell address in history!) of that beloved leader to the children of Israel who had literally grown up under the tutelage of his forty year administration. As we handle the document and text of his last will and testament to this community that had exhausted four decades of wandering in the bleached, barren wilderness south of Canaan, we will ponder the notion that in their wanderings lies the tale of our own journey toward the Promised Land. For the apostle firmly asserts: “Now all these things happened to them [in the wilderness] as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (I Corinthians 10:11). Have “the ends of the ages” come upon us? And are we prepared for the high calling of that “rendevous with destiny?” What are the lessons of and for “the chosen?” Journey with me this season as we track the sandy footprints of that chosen generation long, long ago. And in Moses’ appeal to remember, may we heed the call of another leader who spoke courage into the uncertainty of a journey that yet remained: “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history” (Life Sketches 196). Nothing to fear, much to remember, and a future to claim. It is the shining hour of “The Chosen.” Shall we not seize it?
How would you like to teach school in New Orleans? The government is endeavoring to attract new teachers to what, even before Hurricane Katrina, was one of the toughest and most challenging school districts in the nation. But now in the post-traumatic stress of that crippled city, recruiters are offering to every teacher willing to move to the Crescent City a two-year signing bonus of $17,000. Any takers? Fact of the matter is that whether you teach in New Orleans or Benton Harbor or Berrien Springs you’ve signed on to a very demanding profession. U.S. Department of Labor statistics report that there are now 3.8 million preschool through high school teachers (public and private) in the United States, with annual earnings ranging (in the latest statistics available) from $26,730 to $71,370. Any takers now? But sit down with a school teacher, private or public, and inquire the motivation that keeps the teacher returning to that noisy classroom day after day, and I predict you’ll not hear a word about “the compensation package.” And probably not too much about the working environment or physical plant either (which isn’t to suggest that such factors aren’t important or vital to these professionals). But to a man and woman among the teachers I’m privileged to know (and work with) the gut motivation and heart response keep coming down to a personal passion for kids, a love of learning and teaching and the desire to change this world one life at a time. And the rewards? Years ago the screen play “Mr. Holland’s Opus” powerfully portrayed the payoff of a high school music teacher, whose dream to compose a world-class opus was perennially preempted by his devotion to the kids who tromped through his band room year after year. Their surprise rendition of his unfinished opus at his retirement program captured the compelling truth about teachers—their greatest life compositions are played out in the lives of their students long after school days are over. I carry these two quotations in my Bible: “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth” (Eccl 12:1); and, “What line can we dwell upon that will make the deepest impression upon the human mind? There are our schools” (FE 529). In that juxtaposition is the reason why I thank God for the hundreds of dedicated Christian teaching professionals in this parish. Let the school bells clang—our kids are in the right hands!