“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
I was given the joyous opportunity and responsibility to prepare and deliver the baccalaureate address, the fancy speech given during a high school graduation ceremony, for Parkway Christian School’s graduating class of 2024. What follows is that message, one with an earnest call to “look up,” delivered on May 23, 2024. Minor edits have been utilized to better fit the present medium and to rectify any of my (surely many) verbal flubs.
Look Up, by Mr. Eric D. VanHouten (Mr. V):
Thank you, Mrs. W, for the kind introduction. And thank you parents, friends, and family for being here to support and celebrate this graduating class. I am grateful for the privilege and opportunity to be up here encouraging such a gifted group of students.
My wife asked me if I was nervous to be up here tonight; that is odd, because she knows better than anyone how much I love being slowly melted by stage lights, sitting still for long stretches of time, and attempting to speak articulately in front of large audiences.
However, I could, and still can as I read this, genuinely answer that question with “no.” The students, in just a few minutes the alumni, who sit behind me are the reason it is not at all too difficult to be up here. This is a class that survived a pandemic that effectively desocialized the world right as they entered one of the most critically social chapters of their lives. This is a class that has seen tragedy and disparity. This is a class that has experienced darkness and has felt the depths of the brokenness of the world and of the people on it. Yet, this is a class, with the prayers and partnership of all the people in front of me playing no small part, that has earned their spot on this stage. This is a class filled with award winners, scholarship earners, commendation receivers, prayer warriors, trophy getters, tragedy conquerors, joy bringers, and Christ followers.
I do not believe that I have or ever will have the ability to steer this class astray in just five to ten minutes. Likewise, I cannot do so poorly as the speaker that these impressive young adults fail to step into the plans the Lord has ordained for them next according to His will.
So, graduating class of 2024, in the brief time that I have to speak to you all directly… while facing the opposite direction… I want to share with you one, important, difficult, sometimes confusing, passionate piece of advice and encouragement. This is how I will phrase it: Look up. It is certainly a strange instruction, but strange is often memorable. Look up.
Isaiah 55:8-11 says this: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (emphasis mine).
Class of 2024, do not simply follow the whims of your own thoughts. Look up. That to which you are called from above will surely be accomplished, not because your accomplishments, grades, and awards are good enough to fulfill that calling in life, but because our God in the Heavens above waters that soil on which you toil. Look up, for our God above is far greater, He is wise, and He is true. You are an impressive group. But you still need to look up to see and know the way.
However, the point of looking up is not only to realize how low we are. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” Each of you, however you brave the difficulties of life and maturity going forward, will need to look up. This night is as much a celebration of what is next as it is a goodbye to what was. Chapters end, and now this chapter of your life is complete. But, if you could not tell from all the MAP tests, AP classes, SAT prep, and college applications, a central theme in this chapter of your life was the equipping for what comes next.
At some point, the chapter ends, the curtains close, the credits roll for the finale of your favorite show you just watched 60 hours of in the last five days. But, if recent box office trends tell us anything of lasting truth, it’s probably that… everybody gets a reboot. So, look up. That is, look to Heaven, for those who make a difference, those who change the world in this life, are those who look most intently at the next one.
Look up, because that is how you find the way.
Look up, because that is how you will change the world.
The operative word throughout all this “advice” is look. Direct your gaze, focus your vision. You cannot expect to succeed if you do not have that aim—the goal. Without such a goal, without a direction to look, you will never hit the target. Aim for something. Moreover, the passage we read in Isaiah positions you as low, as down here in the dirt, and God as high up, as far above. So, obviously, I am suggesting you direct your gaze and focus your vision towards something greater than yourself. Look up.
Your aim may be to become a journalist. Maybe you will soon begin studies to become a nurse. Maybe you are ready to begin working in a trade, or to someday take the reins of the family business. But… you can change your major. You can refine your passions and change jobs in your forties.
But you can never change the fact that you are made in the image of God, that in this life you are down here in the trenches, and that you are called to look up.
Class of 2024, I am going to read to you a prayer, one which also happens to be a poem, titled The Valley of Vision by Arthur Bennett, modernized slightly by me. Whether or not you close your eyes, I want you to place yourself in this prayer, to imagine as if it were you reading this while proverbially looking up. This prayer changed my life, and although I myself can do very little in five to ten minutes to steer the direction of your life, I pray it helps you look up as well.
The Valley of Vision:
LORD, HIGH AND HOLY, MEEK AND LOWLY,
You have brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see You in the heights;
surrounded by mountains of sin, I behold Your glory.
Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the remorseful spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess everything,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest pits,
and the deeper the pit, the brighter Your stars shine;
Let me find Your light in my darkness,
Your life in my death,
Your joy in my sorrow,
Your grace in my sin,
Your riches in my poverty,
Your glory in my valley.
So, class of 2024, soon to officially be a group of Parkway Christian School alumni, go change the world. But do not go about it on your own nor according to your own will. Instead, look up. Go and passionately sail in the ocean of God’s unending grace in the dawn of this new chapter.
The path is before you. The aim is set.
I will leave you with words written by the apostle Paul in his epistle to the church in Ephesus: “And now, dear brothers and sisters,” and Parkway class of 2024, “one final thing. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you… Know how to be brought low, and know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, learn the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you” (Philippians 4:8-9, 12-13).
Look up. Change the world. Do it all for the glory of God in the valley.
Thank you.
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