Signs of Life: “Junior was here”

It’s Black Friday, and I am in a computer lab “working” on a paper that will be due on the day that I return to Duke.  It is one of only a few assignments left standing between me and my diploma.  That’s right.  On December 12th, at 5:00PM I will hear “pencils down” for the last final of my undergraduate life, and I will cross over as an alumnus of Duke University.  Dang… that is close… Exactly two weeks away, to be more precise.  There will be no balloons, no parade, not even a ceremony (unless I decide to return in May).  Just a note to vacate my apartment by the 15th at noon and pay the Bursar’s office on the way out; the Diploma is in the mail.  A very uneventful ending.

But I’m not bothered by that, not in the least bit.  There are few things that I dread more than enduring a graduation ceremony anyway (the last couple Duke Grad ceremonies did not really impress me).  What has been running through my mind for the last few weeks is not what I will be leaving with, but what am I leaving behind.  What mark have I made on the university, and what mark have I made in the lives of the people that I walked with and ran into day by day.

Studying at Duke University is a very unique opportunity.  I’ve always seen it, but as with most things, the magnitude of this fact is most clear in hindsight.  Duke students come from all over the world.  They will be going out into all of the world.  Many of them will be very influential and powerful in the future.  They will have opportunities to lead in many corners of the Earth and in many aspects of society.  If there was ever a great place to leave behind a legacy, it would be Duke University.  From this one place in Durham, North Carolina, a man with an enlightened perspective can touch and change the world.  And now, as I prepare to leave, I am asking myself if I have lived according to this enlightened perspective.  Have I touched lives in a way that would positively contribute to great changes in culture and society in the future?

So what is this enlightened perspective?  It is the perspective that King Solomon acquires at the end of his lavishly lived life.  As he was preparing to part ways with his luxurious life on Earth, he had a startling revelation: He had barely lived at all.  He had acquired riches untold, he had won the hearts of countless women, and even the allegiance of kings and kingdoms, yet with all of his power and wisdom, he did very little because it all died with him.  At the end of his life he came to realize that the only things that mattered in his life were what he did in service to his God and his people.

A man with an enlightened perspective is a man who receives this revelation early in his life and is wise enough to plant his life as a seed.  Whoever loves his life in this world (like Solomon) will lose it, but he who gives his life will keep it eternally (see John 12:23-26).  I didn’t come to Duke University to acquire (diploma, status, friends, network connections), but to give, inspire, and receive inspiration that I could pass on.  For the same purposes we come into the world.  There is an eternal perspective that we are called to live from.

In our culture, we are obsessed with getting & acquiring, and building up around ourSELVES.  We live in a culture of “me.”  We live in our own little worlds, having no desire to interact with one another unless we absolutely have to, or unless we can gain from it.  We build up our lives around this desire, and our technological “advances” feed into it.  Don’t get me started on iPods…  Let’s just say that they silence lips on buses and at bus stops and inhibit the life-giving interactions that the human soul craves.

The major problem with this “me” culture is that it leads us to chase the life of Solomon, a life that only leads us to the revelation that we have never even lived at all.  The man who invests only in himself is ensuring his own bankruptcy.  When he dies, none of him is left.  We all admire the man who is able to “waste” his life by giving it away in service because we all secretly wish we had the guts to do the same.  What if you did?  What if you could just let go of yourself and live life completely free?

I want to ask you a question that has come to be one that drives most (and hopefully eventually all) aspects of my life and how I live it.  When you die, what evidence will there be on Earth that you actually lived?  When you look down from Heaven (hoping you get there) will you be able to see “your life” still at work in people who were blessed and inspired by you?  Or will you see your life waste away in the poor stewardship of the material riches that you acquired and left behind?

I believe that we all, especially Christians, should live with this question in the back of our minds.  I want my life to count for so much.  I want my life to impact millions and continue on for every generation until the return of Christ.  I have no desire to be famous.  Fame has nothing to do with legacy.  My mother, through her investments into her children and community, is watching from heaven as she sees how she was able to touch millions through a diligent life as a mother and homemaker.  That is because everything that she stood for lives through me, my siblings, and through countless others that she touched and inspired.  It doesn’t matter if history forgets my name, just as it is likely to forget hers.  I want the world to be filled with signs that I had actually lived, that I have made my contribution.  I want the angels of Heaven to fly to and fro, marking God’s seal of approval on movements around the world, saying “this is possible because Junior Was Here.”  The only way that I will ever see this fulfilled is by giving my life away.

Would you join me?  Will you plant your life like a seed into the lives of those around you?

I pray that my life at Duke University amounted to much more than the piece of paper that I am leaving with.  In these last two weeks, I pray that I will have many more opportunities to give out of what God has invested in me.