Well, here it is. Here I am. The last
full day of high school is completely over. Forever.
Never will I ever eat lunch in the
commons ever again.
Never will I ever sit and work in that
library where so many conversations took place and where my book was
written.
Never will I ever have a third, fourth,
or fifth hour at Saline High School.
It's all coming to a close. It's all
ending. Many of these people I will probably never see again.
The sun is so warm on me. So warm and
so full of life giving light. What has God taught me this year? Or
rather these four years. Four pivotal years. I have done what everyone else has – grown,
learned, made mistakes, and all the rest, but the important thing is
that God has been faithful.
Later –
Well all that blahity-blah stuff I
wrote before was pointless fluff and forced sentimentality. I'm
outside now. The sun is setting and the world from the vantage point
of my bedroom looked so beautiful and I wanted to go on a walk so
badly and have a beautiful, wonderful, spiritually touching
experience. I had no such experience.
I turned to walk west on Textile and chase after the golden beams of the setting
sun, but instead of being enraptured by the beauty, I saw roadkill.
It was the first thing I saw. A raccoon, all sprawled out. Bloody and
gutty. Swarms of flies feasted on the rotting flesh. They gathered
around the raccoon's mouth and eyes and as I drew nearer, they rose
up in their disgusting masses. I passed by on the opposite side of
the road, but that did nothing to stop my eyes from being drawn with
a certain horrible fascination to the carcass. But I passed it, tried
my best to forget it, and turned my attention once more to the
setting sun, attempting to thrust my mentality out of roadkill
thoughts and into deep, beautiful, spiritual thoughts.
But still the setting sun did not rivet
my attention. For there was trash on the road. A milk carton. A piece
of plastic. A crumpled bag. Instead of an idyllic walk down a
quintessential country road, I saw trash coated in layers of dust and
hurting my eyes. It was like a deep wound cutting through flesh.
Ugly, festering sores on God's good earth. Not only that, but I was
now walking downwind of the raccoon and it smelled positively rank.
Disappointed, I turned back. Back past
the trash and the filth of the raccoon being eaten by flies. Back to
my house with images of a sadly and radically broken world imprinted
in my mind. But it gave me perspective, that ugly, smelly walk.
Graduating high school is an occasion of great celebration. Many a
person will congratulate me and lift up praise and thanks to our God
for all He has done in my life these 18 years. I will feel happy,
proud, content, and at peace with the world and everything in it. Yet
I cannot forget that the world I was born into and the world that I
will soon graduate from is not a world of perpetually idyllic,
spiritually uplifting sunsets. No, it is a world of rotting roadkill
and crumpled up trash. There is something so drastically and
profoundly wrong with our world
that no images of fly ridden raccoons could ever suffice to describe
the deep wound that cuts to the very core of this world – an
infected, festering, bleeding wound that is SO COMPLETELY WRONG. Even
after the disappointing stroll down the road, I tried to redeem the evening by sitting in the grass with the blue
sky and the singing birds and it certainly was beautiful, but a
mosquito came and bit my ankle and I got hives from the
grass.
I live in an
imperfect world.
But
there's a twist in the story of imperfection. You knew it was coming,
didn't you? And good thing it came, or else this life wouldn't be
worth living for a second. There's a twist in the story, and it's
worth living for.
How many countless times have I heard this Good News of the twist in
the story? Yet each time I witness the trash and the dead raccoons of
this world, the overriding truth of the twist in the story impacts me
more profoundly.
There is a twist in the story.
The wound of this world will be made right.
And when I walk out of that building at last tomorrow, I will
remember and know in my deepest of hearts that I was like that
raccoon. Dead. Rotting. Fly-ridden. Utterly revolting. And that is
who I would have always been if it were not for the twist in the
story. And so I will walk out of that building free in the knowledge
that I have been washed as white as snow and that I have been
crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who lives but Christ
lives in me. He delivered me, and He is redeeming this world of trash
and road kill. All things are being made new. A chapter of my life
will end forever tomorrow. In so many ways, it is just the beginning.
With God, it is always just the beginning because we carry with us
the hope of what is unseen – the hope of eternity.
I cannot forget the ugliness and the brokenness. I cannot ignore it.
It is here in this world – literally right outside my window.
Graduating from high school is not all about sentimentality,
happiness, and good feelings. Graduating from high school is not
about the American dream, or pursuing a glittering career, or your
hard work and fantastic achievements.
Graduating from high school is not about me.
Graduating
from high school is about going out into a world full of roadkill and
embracing the dead, rotting, abhorrent, sickening wrongness with all
of your heart, soul, mind and strength all in the name of Jesus and
all for His Kingdom and His Glory. He took the rotting roadkill
raccoon in me, and made it something beautiful. No, he is
making
it something beautiful.
