What Will We Do Now That We've Received a Blessing?

The following is a transcript of the remarks given by our Head of School Ty Fischer at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for our new addition. His words and charge to us are beneficial for our entire school community to hear and bear in mind as we go forth this year enjoying God's blessings at our school!

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For years, we have prayed, planned, worked, sacrificed, and given toward this day. And now, here we are. A beautiful new gymnasium, wonderful new classrooms, and laboratories that will serve generations of Veritas students.

God has been very kind to us.

But I want to ask a question this morning: What will we do now? 

You see, I believe that one of the great measures of our character is what we do with the blessings God gives us. And that should make us a little nervous today.

In Deuteronomy 8, Moses gives the Israelites a rather surprising warning. They are about to enter the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. After forty years in the wilderness, they are about to receive a glorious blessing.

But Moses warns them:

"Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God ... lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them ... when your heart is lifted up, you forget the Lord your God."

Isn't that interesting? 

Moses doesn't warn them that suffering will make them forget God. He warns them that blessing might make them forget God.

There is a terrible danger in receiving wonderful gifts. We can become so enamored with the gifts that we forget the Giver.

And so, today, surrounded by these wonderful blessings, we should ask: How can we avoid falling into that trap–”The Forgetful Trap”? 

Well, one strategy would be to make everything ugly!

Perhaps we should have built a big, ugly, utilitarian box. That way, nobody would be tempted to love it too much!

But that is not God's way.

Think about the Garden of Eden. Think about the descriptions of heaven. Think about the Temple that God commanded Solomon to build. They were beautiful! Gloriously beautiful!

God is not embarrassed by beauty, and neither should we be.

Today, we live in a country that is more blessed than any nation in history. Sadly, the reaction of many to this blessing is that they are ashamed, embarrassed or even hateful toward those blessings. This is foolishness. We should be thankful for every blessing God gives and for every person in the past that made sacrifices for us so that we could enjoy the blessings we experience today. 

So how do we enjoy these wonderful gifts without forgetting the Giver?

I want to suggest three things.

First, God blesses us so that we can be a blessing.

When God called Abraham, He promised, "I will bless you ... and you shall be a blessing."

God's gifts are never intended to end with us.

Look around this room. What is this gymnasium for? Is it simply a place to win basketball games? I certainly hope we win a lot of basketball games! But if that is all we do here, we will have missed the point.

This is a place where students will learn courage, discipline, teamwork, perseverance, and love for their neighbors. It is a place where we will gather to worship, celebrate, compete, and encourage one another.

And the same is true of our classrooms and laboratories. They are places where students will learn to think carefully, discover God's world, and prepare for lives of loving service.

I love the windows in this building. We have joked that we put them there so God can see what we are doing!

Of course, He doesn't need windows.

But they can remind us that everything that happens here is done, Coram Deo, before the face of God.

And ultimately, the greatest blessings of this building will not be what happens inside these walls, but what happens when our students go out from these walls to love and serve the world.

Second, God blesses us so that we will grow up.

One of the great dangers of blessing is that we become childish. We want more and more gifts, and we never learn to love the One who gives them.

But maturity demands that we learn to love the Giver more than the gift.

Think about Polycarp, the great bishop of Smyrna. When he was an old man, he was commanded to deny Christ or face death.

His response was magnificent:

"Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

Think about that.

Eighty-six years of experiencing the faithfulness of God had not made Polycarp comfortable, spoiled, or self-satisfied.

It had made him faithful.

The blessings of God welded his heart to Jesus.

That is what I want for Veritas. I want these blessings to make us more grateful, more courageous, more faithful, and more in love with Jesus Christ.

Students, I hope you love this building. I hope you enjoy it immensely.

But I hope that when you are old, you will look back and say, not simply, "What a wonderful school I attended," but rather, "How good God was to me! And how those blessings taught me to love Him!"

Third, God blesses us so that we will pour ourselves out for others for His sake.

Think about what happens when we celebrate the Lord's Supper.

God gives us bread and wine, signs of His extraordinary love for us. They remind us that God provided what we could never provide for ourselves.

And that provision came at a terrible cost—the suffering and death of His beloved Son.

Then we eat the bread and drink the wine. We receive these gifts into ourselves.

And what are we to do?

We are to go out into the world and imitate our Savior. We are to pour out our lives for others.

That is what I want to happen in this building.

I want our students to learn to give themselves away.

And why?

Not because everyone around us is wonderful. They aren't. We aren't!

Not simply because other people are needy, although they certainly are. Pity is not a sufficient reason for the deep sacrifices that God is asking us to make. 

We pour ourselves out for others because Jesus Christ is worthy.

He is worthy of our gratitude. He is worthy of our obedience. He is worthy of our sacrifice. He is worthy of our lives.

And that brings us back to our question: What will we do now?

We have received an extraordinary blessing. And today, we rejoice! We should rejoice! We should celebrate the beauty of this place and the generosity of the people who made it possible.

But we must not stop there.

Let us resolve that these buildings will be places where we bless others, where we grow up in gratitude and faithfulness, and where we learn to pour out our lives in service to Christ.

Someday, these buildings will be old. Someday, the paint will fade, the floors will wear, and another generation will have to renovate what we have built.

But if we are faithful, the blessings of this day will endure long after the buildings themselves have grown old.

They will endure in the lives of loving, serving, thinking students who go out into the world and live for the glory of God.

So, what will we do now?

We will receive God's blessings with joy. We will remember the Giver. And we will give ourselves away for the sake of Jesus Christ.

For He is worthy.

To God be the glory!

Amen.

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