What Graduation Looks like in 2020

Today I’m getting a taste of everyone else’s 2020. I’m watching an online graduation made necessary by coronavirus. Even the classes took place online.

I was a deacon at a church called New Dawn Ministries. While I was there, I met a young lady named Tina. She was in her teens. I don’t know a great deal about her early life, but I know her family was very dysfunctional, and she was raised by her older sister.

Tina made the most of her situation. She was extremely motivated. She participated in beauty contests in order to get scholarships, and she ended up going to the University of Miami.

I lived near the University, and her family lived in Broward County. They asked me if I could drive her to church every Sunday, and I agreed.

Tina did well in college, and she decided to get a master’s degree in leadership and management, with a concentration in human resources. She has been attending Purdue’s online program, and today she graduates. A few days back, she sent me an invitation by text message.

The ceremony appears in a window in a web browser. There are only 4 or 5 people on camera in the room with the podium. They are all wearing masks except when they speak. It felt very strange, watching figures in robes and masks filing into that dark, lonely room. It was like watching a scene from a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, except I was watching real life.

They’re announcing the names of the graduates in alphabetical order. They’re showing a photo of each graduate. We’re in the B’s, and Tina’s last name starts with H.

Tina knew my friend Travis, who died in May. They attended UM at the same time, and they were friends. I had some hope they would pair up and marry.

I won’t get to see Travis graduate, but at least Tina made it.

I saw her photo and sent her a congratulatory text. Now I’ve closed the browser. No point in sitting through dozens of photos of strangers.

I was thinking about Travis, and I decided to do some counting. I counted black male and female graduates, with the intention of stopping when I got to 10 of either. When I quit, I had counted 10 women and only three men. Unfortunate.

It’s funny that I watched the graduation today. I had a dream last night, and it seems related.

I used to write for Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. I met a number of the writers and employees. I remember them. Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, Joel Achenbach, Michelle Genz, Philip Brooker, Ray Bubel, John Dorschner, and Doris Mansour. The editor I generally worked with was named Tom. I remember going to his house for a party. He had just built his own deck. Dave Barry’s young son was taking karate classes, and while I talked to Dave, his son kept punching me in the leg.

I never fit in with the group. There was a hardness to the writers, except for Dave Barry, who seemed to float above it because of his ability and his fame. They were cold, worldly people who looked out for themselves and had no romance in their hearts. Maybe it was because they were journalists. They published my work, but I felt there was a barrier I could never cross. I could never be an insider.

I seemed to connect better with the art people. Of course, I wasn’t in a position to compete with them, although one of my drawings did get published.

In my dream, I was at an outdoor table, eating lunch with several Christians and Tom. In the dream, the Herald still owned its gigantic waterfront headquarters. The table was maybe two miles north of the building, on the other side of I-95.

In the dream, I had quit writing for Tropic. In real life, I quit in about 1988. I had become a Christian, I felt Tropic and the Herald were not very helpful, and again, I didn’t fit in. As the relationship diminished, Tom sensed it. The last thing I remember him saying to me in real life was, “Don’t disappear.”

It felt like Tom was having lunch so far north of the Herald because he wasn’t comfortable being seen with me. I could tell he wanted me to do some more work for him, and I was willing to do small jobs, just to be helpful. He wasn’t direct, but he hinted at a desire to bring me back in.

Our lunch companions started talking about his choice to have lunch so far from his office. I got up to throw my soda can in the trash, and I said, “It’s because we’re conservatives. Or because we’re Christians.”

I woke up, and I felt distressed. I found myself thinking about the years I had wasted, trying to get the devil’s world to accept me. I tried to make it as a writer, and I had two comic strips that reached the development stage. Many times, I had the feeling I had finally broken the ice. Success was just a few weeks away. But it never came. I was grabbing Satan’s bait over and over. I didn’t realize there were two different families on the planet, and when it came to earthly promotion, I belonged to the wrong one.

If you belong to God, you’re not supposed to get wrapped up in secular accomplishments. The word says God sets him that is godly apart for himself. You shouldn’t feel you have to win prizes or titles. You shouldn’t believe you have to have your name on buildings. You shouldn’t feel like a failure because you’re not a big name in some field or other. Secular accomplishments are God’s garbage. They don’t go with you to heaven. Up there, your service to God is what makes you rich. You get to see your wealth every time you see a person you helped to make it.

Satan likes to dangle bait in front of people. He’ll say, “You can serve God and be an Oscar winner. You can be a billionaire. You can win a Nobel Prize.” He’ll give you the idea that you glorify God with your silly achievements, as if God needs you to help him get publicity. Generally, in order to get what he offers you, you have to whore out. If you don’t, he keeps you from winning, and he gives his tacky prizes and ribbons to people with less ability but more plasticity.

I didn’t feel good, thinking about the wasted years, but then I got a supernatural revelation that made me feel wonderful.

Every Christian who understands the Holy Spirit and grace knows we are not supposed to serve God through hard work or superior natural ability. We are not supposed to earn; we are supposed to receive an inheritance. This is why the volumes of the Bible are called testaments. A testament is a will. Jesus died, and we are supposed to inherit what he earned.

Spirits work and move in every person. The only spirit a Christian should carry is the Holy Spirit, but many of us are inhabited by more than one spirit. People who don’t know God are full of evil spirits, but they don’t know the Holy Spirit.

A Spirit-led Christian is supposed to be like a hand connected to a body. A hand doesn’t feed itself. It doesn’t even have a mouth. It doesn’t get a job to pay for its upkeep. The body feeds it and looks after it. A Christian who thinks he has to take care of himself and guide himself is like a severed hand with delusions.

If I am truly God’s son, I am supposed to be as much a part of him as my hand is part of me. My hand is supported from within the body, through various vessels. As a Christian, I am supposed to be supplied by God at all times, and–this is the important part–I should never feel that he is reluctant to supply ever need, more abundantly than I need. He allowed himself to be tortured to death so he could do that.

I really am God’s son, and he really is eager to do things for me.

I knew these things before last night, but you know how it is with revelation. I hope. You can know things perfectly well and still not have a good grasp of them. A supernatural revelation will make knowledge part of you, undeniable and suddenly obvious.

Things like faith, love, peace, and knowledge are supposed to flow into us without end, just as blood flows into hands. God didn’t put us here so we could be isolated and poor.

Satan isolates people and makes them feel alone and small, and that makes sense, because he’s a predator. Predators like to get their prey alone. God binds us to himself so we have his power and invulnerability of God. If we don’t see these things fully manifested, it’s because we’re blocking God with our misconceptions and disobedience.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural. If Satan cuts me off from help and prevents me from succeeding, God will make me an important member of his family, and he will give me victory.

If I had gotten rich writing or drawing a comic strip, I would be a mess. I wouldn’t have realized I needed to get closer to God. I would be subject to tremendous temptation, and I would probably give in all the time. I would have a social circle of cold, godless people who would keep drawing me away from God. I might have a horrible atheist wife (or ex-wife) who would be like a painful tumor to me. I would have friends and business acquaintances who would take advantage of me and make me feel bad about myself. I would have no prayer life. I would not know how to get God’s help when I or someone else needed it. I would be a rich failure.

The revelation I got last night is life-changing. Things will be much better from now on.

I hope you will keep trying to get close to God. It’s the only plan that works. The others are just traps.