Never Content

It’s that season, the season of caps and gowns and graduates eagerly anticipating the next phase of their lives. I’ve been honored to speak at more than one graduation ceremony this year, and each one is moving in its own unique way. I thank God for the blessing of sharing such an important moment, the beginning of a new journey, with these students and their families. When I spoke with the graduates of Concordia University Texas a few weeks ago, on May 9, I shared a few words of discontent:

“Never Content”

On this Mother’s Day weekend we take sober and somber note that nearly 10 million children under 5 die each year from causes related to poverty, like measles, diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria; diseases which are fully beatable and treatable; diseases which we can prevent; diseases which do indeed prevent the hopes of proud mothers from becoming reality; diseases which prevent families from ever seeing fabulous graduations like we are experiencing today; young lives, over before they really begin. That’s 27,000 a day—in Texas, that would mean a high school football stadium full of young children dying every day, 38 a minute, on average, nearly 500 now dead while I’m talking this morning.
On the way over here this morning, my hospitable driver, your president, Dr. Tom Cedel, a man with an unceasing discontent for mediocrity, proudly told me of the 1700 students from this institution who volunteered this year to make a difference here in this world. Congratulations, graduates! We need your spirit, young people with plenty of energy who will not accept the irrationality of millions of needless, senseless deaths every year.
Martin Luther King, Jr. captured well your spirit when he said: “Deeply woven into the fiber of our tradition is the conviction that all people are made in the image of God. If we accept this, we cannot be content to see people hungry or suffering.”