Graduation is right around the corner. I’m pretty amped about it. In the past couple weeks I’ve gotten about 12 or 13 letters of encouragement from friends and family members. I guess that’s what happens when you graduate college. In May, a lot of us will walk across the graduation stage while that typical, slow, nostalgic graduation music fills the air. But what happens after the music stops?
Some people will get a job, a dog, a spouse, a mortgage and 2.5 kids and live their life. Some people that graduate, will get a job, go to work and have an identity crisis. So they’ll go back to school. They’ll hit rewind and start over. It happens. Life doesn’t always go like you planned it.
I think a lot of life has to do with life vision. Some people don’t really have a clear vision for their life and others have no vision at all. Get a vision for your life and remember that you need the proper lenses to view a vision in 20/20. Seeing clearly can help you spot that next step right in front of you. For me, grad school seems to be the next step to take.
This is my last Oracle as editorial editor and I have enjoyed being a journalism student here very much. This job is tough but I’m glad I had the opportunity to encourage some kingdom people along the way. I don’t envy my successor one bit-especially since Lucas Flatt is no longer available.
Dear Whoever-takes-this-job-next, good luck finding the ying to your yang-the pepper to your salt. The peanut butter to your.you get it.
I set out to find a liberal assistant editorial editor that could write like nobody’s business and I’d like to think I found him in Lucas. I’m pretty pleased with what he’s accomplished.
Even though we may not agree about anything, it was always exciting to receive 10 emails and have the “hate mail” evenly distributed between the two of us. I think both of us stuck to our guns.
This world is full of people that hold beliefs but not many that will take much of a stand for anything transcendent-it’s like we’re scared of our lives. Why are we scared our lives will spill out into the world? Everybody’s life makes noise. What kind of noise is your life making?
Have the courage to stand in the gap and say, “Turn my life up.” Live a life by stereo my friends, don’t go on and on in mono like everyone else-rebel against what our world fallen has offered you. The worst that could happen is that you might lose your life-but even then you might light a flame that our generation will never see extinguished.
Recently I mentioned a human emergency that’s plaguing our world and a lot of people didn’t respond too favorably to the article. If the only knew! People just don’t get it and if not for grace then neither would I.
As I’ve moved through college, the word freedom has gotten tossed around a lot by the people I’ve met. “Freedom,” they said, “I can do whatever I want whenever I want to do it! Freedom!”
But is that freedom? I would say no. Take Michael Phelps for example. How many gold medals in swimming does that dude have? A bunch. When Phelps jumps in the pool and leaves fools in his dust (water vapors), do you think he feels free? Yeah. Being able to dominate like that, knowing you’ve prepared is a liberating feeling.
But what if he did whatever he wanted to whenever he wanted to do it? What if he never disciplined himself to be in the pool at dawn for the entire day, every day for four years from one Olympic Games to the next? Would he feel freedom in the pool come competition time? No. He would feel shackled by his lack of discipline.
Would he be the greatest swimmer in the world if he was hitting the marijuana bong every day? No, he’d be out of shape and feel imprisoned in the pool as his opponents blew by him (and he’d be shackled by the horrible publicity he got for smoking cannabis).
Many people on this planet are shackling themselves while claiming to be free. They’re not free, they just wear shiny “shackles and iced out chains.” They’re slaves and they don’t even know it. They’re sold out for things that don’t matter when they could be souled out for the only thing that’s worth living for.
I’m sure I’ll be accused of standing on a soapbox or something, but I’m not worried about it. When it’s all said and done, at the end of days, the sky will either crack with trumpets blazing as we hear “I’m back” from on high.or it won’t. I believe the gospel of Christ, the good news of our world redeemed.
I’m sure some of you have choice words for what that makes me, but by his grace I am what I am and I’m cool with that.
One one six. I’m outta here.
-Nathan Xanders
