Opinion

Spring planting well under way

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

I finally have my spring planting finished. Of course, my planting is done on a very small scale and is easily accomplished. I had some flower seeds to sow this year, something I've never tried before and, though I followed the package directions carefully, I have no idea how well they will do. My planting is haphazard at best -- I kind of set the plants out, keep them watered and weeded and hope for the best.

Sunday evening I was in the audience at the annual baccalaureate service. The turnout of seniors was light, with just a tad over half of the graduating class in attendance. That's too bad. The program was well worth the time invested. There must have been three or four family members present for each graduate however -- parents, grandparents, teachers and pastors-- beaming proudly as the seniors made their way in.

I am always so impressed with the level of talent and courage shown by our hometown kids. Sunday night Alison Hofer got right up there in front of everyone and said what needed to be said. I can't imagine anything more daunting. Throughout our lives, it seems, our peers are our harshest critics and gone are the days when words of faith are genuinely accepted or expected. Undoubtedly, there were a few skeptics in Sunday night's crowd, kids that were attending because Mom or Dad -- knowing the sometimes rocky road that awaits the newly graduated -- thought it was where they needed to be. But everyone paid strict attention to the speakers and the young gentlemen didn't so much as blink when asked to remove their caps for the benediction. Each one did their parents proud.

It's hard to do justice, in this forum or in a straight news story, to the message Rob Putz gave Sunday evening.

Talk about courage. When he started his remarks with a confession about his hungover condition at his own baccalaureate years ago, you could have heard a pin drop in the audience. Few, if any, were expecting a minister of the Gospel to be so frank about something so shocking. A minister who drank? For three days running? Setting a new keg record? It certainly got my attention.

But it was precisely that honesty that gave credence to his message. Once we knew that truth about him, we could sense the truth in his words about the empty nights he spent seeking purpose. We knew we could trust the retelling of his preconceived notions of what it meant to be a Christian and many of us could identify with those preconceptions.

More than one adult in attendance murmured a heartfelt "amen" under their breath when he made the statement about Jesus being a "life-support system" rather than a crutch and I'm sure even some of the members of the graduating class could identify with that well-spoken truth as well. After all, without Jesus, we are all dead men. Dead in our sins, dead in our hearts, helpless and utterly without hope.

Rob also spoke at the baccalaureate two years ago when his daughter was a member of the graduating class. He spoke then and Sunday night as well about the most critical question any man will ever face.

"What did you do with Jesus?"

He's absolutely right. It is the only question that matters. It is the question on which the eternity of that indefinable, indestructible part of every person-- the part we call the soul -- rests.

It is a certainty that all who encounter Jesus will respond in some way. Some will say "yes" or "no" at the outset and never change their minds. Others may say "wait." Still others will say "yes" when they really mean "wait." Rob initially said "no," then dared God to prove himself, and finally, praise God, learned to let himself be loved by God. His "no" in actuality meant "wait." It took him seven years from that bleary baccalaureate experience to come to a believer's faith.

In telling his story, he sent forth vibrant, healthy seeds. His comments about sleepless nights spent looking for something to fill the emptiness resounded in the hearts of those who have ever wondered "what's it all about?" As I watched the young men and women file out of the gymnasium at the end of the program, there didn't seem to be many skeptics left. Instead of skeptics, I saw before me freshly tilled soil, soft and pliable, waiting only for a little rain, a little sunshine, to come and awaken the newly sown seeds in the gardens of their hearts.

"But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." Matthew 13:23 (NIV)

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