Last week …. horrible and beautiful at the same time…. it was a time of death and of new lives begun….times of struggle and high drama… times when you fight for the mind and soul of a kid…. One more young man dies in an automobile…. 12 graduate into new lives….
There is a time to live and a time to die…. but my dear Lord too young… Dear God.. he’s sixteen… just beginning ot taste life…and having lived more harshly than many adults can imagine…Dear God there is not a mark anywhere, as his stricken parent tries to look at his face, tries to form the word “yes” then “that is him”.
in life so grown…in death so child-like…as if he is becoming the little child you told us all we must become to enter in…. My deepest soul tells me he is resting in you… the next loving face he will see will be yours….
times to struggle and times to savor triumph… magnificent people surround me…. a team made up of people who were born to do this job….though some wonder if they were….if they are helping kids grow…. but they are… every moment they spend with the kids….
Gleaming faces as they walk…. diplomas…. tassels…. folders with fake diplomas…. they will pick up the real ones later….
There is a time for sadness, then a time for great joy… and they are separated by only a few miles.
There can be no great sadness but for the presence of great joy. Great happiness and great sadness are so close… they are so closely related.
The truth is I didn’t know the boy who died. But his death moved me nonetheless. We share in any death because we will all taste physical death. We know….. We understand that we will all go that way someday… we will walk that path…
But the death of a young person seems to have such a deeper meaning…. In death a young life that would have been part of the greater story of mankind is removed to early. We lose their humanity, their love…. We lose the greatness that could have been… the graduation that was not to be… the life that was not led… then children who were not born… the mountain top moments that were not experienced.
So this is what I tell young people and what I would tell the graduates.
Live as if you had 6 weeks…. how would it change your life… what would you do to raise your life to the highest levels in the time you had left. And to teachers what would you say to classes if it were your last time to speak with them alive… what would you tell them… what part of your heart would you reveal… how would you treat them… how would you love them….
If you had 6 weeks to make your mark on the world, what would you do… what would you say…
And you may have 6 weeks, you may have less… what would you want to get done… but most important what would you say to your children in that six weeks. What are the things you would teach them… What are the things you would want them to accomplish….
In the eyes of every child is greatness… In the heart of every child is love… In the soul of every child is eternity…
Please God let me live my life as if my days were severely numbered… as if I had only a few weeks to save a soul or to fulfil my life to you Lord. Please God let me understand my mortality so I can know what i have left to accomplish so i don’t waste my life on the small things… but on making a profound difference in lives around me.
Please God let me live my life as if the children you have given me have only a few weeks…. as if I have only a few weeks to give them every kindness, all my love… all my teaching.
Please Lord let me live as if I have no life of my own…that it will one day go back to you….. Let me remember that the last words I say to someone may be the last words they hear… let my words be your words, righteous, just, loving, protecting.
Daily Graces 