(A PDF of this address is available on the downloads page)

President Porter, distinguished Senate and Board of Trustees, esteemed faculty and staff, honored graduands, ladies and gentlemen. 

I count it a high privilege to address you on this day when you graduands are about to climax a memorable and profitable chapter in your preparations for serving as ambassadors for Jesus Christ in our needy world.

When I was a boy growing up in Michigan, before the days of television, my father would turn on our vintage cabinet radio at 6 pm every evening to listen to the singular voice of newscaster Lowell Thomas.  We were especially interested in learning what was happening in the various theatres of the Second World War.  My young mind was greatly impacted by the nightly accounts of bombs destroying cities, submarines sinking great battleships, and thousands of military and civilian people being killed or wounded.  I learned that P.O.W. meant prisoner of war, and M.I.A. meant missing in action.  And then I heard another term: D. P.  I learned from my father that D. P. stood for Displaced Persons, people who had been forced to leave their homes because of fear, decree or destruction.  Later, I met people who had been D. P.s, but had found a new home in North America.  O, what stories they had to tell!

Some years ago I met Lydia who had been born in Yugoslavia.  When she was just 6 months old, her parents decided to abandon their home and risk their lives in an attempt to escape an oppressive government.  Safely across the border, they found themselves in a holding camp in Italy for 9 months, till Canada opened its doors to them.  That family settled in Kitchener and began attending the church where we’ve been ministering for many years.  Eventually a young man by the name of Paul fell in love with Lydia.  I had the privilege of marrying them. And my wife Adrienne and I are delighted that Lydia is now our daughter-in-law and the godly mother of three of our grandchildren.  How wonderful when a D. P. can find a home.

And that’s what the Bible is all about: It’s the story of a holy and a loving God “Bringing D. P.s Home.”  The first two chapters of Genesis are full of good news.  In the beginning God created everything, and his whole creation was very good.  And in that perfect Garden of Eden God placed a man and a woman whom he’d created in his image for fellowship with him and with one another.  But chapter 3 tells the woeful account of their willful choice to disobey God.  Sin broke their perfect fellowship with God and forced them from that perfect home.  And so Adam and Eve became the world’s first Displaced Persons.

An extra-biblical source has reported that when Adam, now outside the Garden of Eden, was toiling to raise a vegetable garden, one of his two young sons looked up into Adam’s sweaty face.  Cain asked, “Dad, why are we out here instead of in that beautiful garden you told us about?”  Adam leaned on his hoe and said, “Boys, there was a day . . . when your mother . . . ate us out of house and home.”  Now if he’d told the whole truth, he’d have admitted that he too had done the same.  And ever since, every person born into this world has been born a D. P.  The rest of the Bible is the true story of a just and merciful God working out the only redemptive plan possible for bringing D. P.s home.

This is truly good news!  Evangel means good news.  An evangelical is one who believes this good news.  And an evangelist is one who shares this good news.  The good news for all of us D. P.s is this: that we sinners can be justified by faith alone through grace alone because of Christ alone according to the Scriptures alone. 

Psalm 107 could be called “The D. P.’s Psalm.”  It tells six dramatic stories of six groups of D. P.s and how they were brought home: the wanderers, the prisoners, the rebels, the storm-tossed, the hungry and the oppressed.  It calls on them all to “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.  Let the redeemed of the Lord say this – those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the land, from east and west, from north and south” (Psalm 107:1-3). 

Yes, God is in the gathering business, having paid the price of redemption through his son Jesus Christ. And he is pursuing D. P.s from every part of the world.  In every generation he calls for a fresh team of men and women to be ambassadors of this good news and to participate on his rescue team in bringing D. P.s home.  And you, dear graduates, are a vital regiment of those fresh recruits worldwide, whom God has summoned to service.

Psalm 107, verses 4-7, describes the wanderers who had finally returned home from their long exile in Babylon. These D. P.s “wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle.  They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.  Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.  He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.”

D. L. Moody was once asked if people were being converted in his great evangelistic meetings.  He said, “Yes, people are being saved, if we can first get them lost enough.”  By that he meant, until a person realizes he’s an emergency case he’ll never cry out for rescue.  There are many D. P.s in our world who don’t yet realize their condition.  We who are called to the ministry of reconciling people to God must realize that an essential first part of our ministry is to help people recognize how displaced they really are.

In Paul Tournier’s book, A Place for You, he underscores the essential need of every person to have a sense of place, a place where one can truly feel at home.  And once discovered, you can then feel at home any place. God offers that place of belonging to every person who will receive him.  He offers a place in the Family, the Family of God.  Paul says in Ephesians 1:5 that “In love [God] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” 

I know a young woman by the name of Melody who was adopted by a Christian couple when she was just a few days old.  It was my privilege to perform the wedding of Melody to Dan. I’ll never forget that at their reception, she stood in her beautiful white wedding dress and with tears in her eyes, to say, “I just want to thank God that I was adopted and not aborted.” Melody is here today beside her husband, our son Dan, and their 2 children.

Adoption into the family of God occurs at the moment of receiving by faith the gift of everlasting life purchased for us by Christ at Calvary.  Adoption means that we, who once were alienated from God, have now been received by him into his family, a place of security and of identity.  As children of the King, we believers have now become royalty with all of its attendant rights, privileges and responsibilities.

It is God our heavenly Father who adopts the believer.  It is God the Son who paid the price for our adoption.  And it is God the Holy Spirit who is the adoption agent.  To you graduands, and to all here who by faith have been adopted into God’s redeemed family, may I give this counsel?  From time to time, you may be asked what you do.  You may wish to answer, “I work for an adoption agency.”  And in this role you will be bringing D. P.s home.

But not only does God offer D. P.s a place in the Family.  He also grants us a place in the Body, the Body of Christ.  I Cor. 12:18 teaches us that, “God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as he desired.” Our physical bodies have many parts with specialized functions, yet they form one body.  And the Bible teaches us that we are the body of Christ, and each one of us is a vital part of it with complementary functions.

To you graduands, may I remind you that your calling is not just to facilitate God’s desire to adopt D. P.s in the Family of God.  You also are called to assist each believer to discover one’s function and to develop one’s God-given skills for ministry in the body of Christ, so that each member ministers effectively to all the others.

It is regrettable that some who claim a place in God’s Family have not yet discovered their place in Christ’s Body.  They live orphaned lives, disconnected from a visible community of sisters and brothers in Christ.  Evangelism brings D. P.s into the Family.  But discipleship prepares them to be fulfilled and functioning members of the Body.

But may I take you one more step in discerning the ministry of bringing D.Ps. home?  Not only does God offer the Displaced Person a place in the Family, and a place in the Body, but he also provides a place in the Glory.  It was Jesus who said, “I go to prepare a place for you, in my Father’s house.”  Yes, life is more than just a journey.  It is also a destination.  Never do we sense that to be more important than when we approach the door of death. 

I recall standing at the bedside of my brother Tim, age 49, as he lay dying of cancer. Knowing I’d probably never see him again in this life, I drove to his home in Illinois and bent over his emaciated body.  I felt led to quietly sing to him,

“Under his wings, I am safely abiding; Though the night deepens and tempests are wild.
Still I can trust him, I know he will keep me; He has redeemed me and I am his child.
Under his wings, under his wings; who from his love can sever?
Under his wings my soul shall abide, safely abide forever.” 

The air was still, and then Tim summoned up enough strength to whisper, “That’s a good place to be.”  A few more seconds of silence and he said, “That’s the best place to be.”  And then, when I thought he was asleep, he suddenly aroused enough to say, “That’s where I want to be.”

The high privilege of Displaced Persons coming home to a place in the Family and a place in the Body and a place in the Glory, is made possible because of someone who gave up his place in the Glory to become a displaced person for us.  Yes, Jesus became that displaced person.  He left his rightful place in order that he might bring many sons to glory. (Heb. 2:10)  When someone asked Jesus where he called home, he said, “The Son of Man has no where to lay his head.” (Matt. 8:20)  Paul wrote, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich.” (II Cor. 8:9)

During the past 40 years it has been our privilege to labor with friends across the land who share with us a burden to provide a place for persons with exceptional needs.  Over 1200 of these precious people are now in our care.  They are served by a capable staff of committed Christians, who recognize that it’s not enough to put a roof over their heads, or food in their stomachs, or clothes on their backs, but above all, to put Jesus in their hearts. Our goal in Christian Horizons is to help these precious friends to find their place in the Family of God, and in the Body of Christ and in the Glory of Heaven.

Forty-three years ago God blessed Adrienne and me with the third of our five children. The day Steven was born we recognized that the Lord had sent him on a special mission in life. When he was 10 years old he asked Adrienne if he could ask the Lord Jesus to come into his life and become his Savior.  She took him to his bedroom where they knelt together and he prayed his own simple prayer asking Jesus Christ to take away his sin and make him a child of God.

About that time I saw the phrase, “Bloom Where You’re Planted.”  It occurred to me that, though Steven had limitations physically and mentally, yet he now loved the Lord and was blooming where he was planted.  So, I thought we might write a little song for him to celebrate his 10^th birthday and also his new birth into God’s Family.  The first stanza says:

The patch in which you’re planted may have its thorns and weeds,
The ground that you’ve been granted my have its rocks and reeds,
The slope on which your slanted may all have gone to seed,
But bloom where you’re planted for the Lord.

The second stanza reminds us that though life may be tough at times:

The place where God has put you can be a perfect place,
The pace that he’s intended is just the perfect pace,
The grace that he will give you is all-sufficient grace,
So bloom where you’re planted for the Lord. 

In the third stanza I try to address those friends who sense that they are still D. P.s in desperate need of finding a home:

If you are not now planted where God can smile on you,
If you have not been granted a life that’s fresh and new;
Then you can be transplanted as only Christ can do,
And bloom where you’re planted for the Lord.

The final stanza speaks of the privilege of “replaced persons” who find true fulfillment and fruitfulness:

Now put your root down deeper into God’s Book divine,
Your leaves will be much greener, your flowers’ fragrance fine;
Your fruit will ripen richer for Heaven’s harvest time,
So bloom where you’re planted for the Lord. 

Bloom where you’re planted, God’s sun still shines above,
Bloom where you’re planted, He showers you with love;
Weeds may grow and winds may blow, but keep your head up high,
And bloom where you’re planted, keep growing toward the sky.

Today we celebrate the success of you graduands, and we commission you to a lifetime of fruitful service for Christ.  You are moving into a variety of redemptive ministries.  But may I urge you all to always remember that, though you may have a specialty, you and I are never exempt from the call to be laborers together with God in the ministry of reconciliation, the evangelistic ministry of bringing D. P.s home.

The vision of Christian ministry is ennobling and energizing.  But the praxis of that ministry also can be so draining and discouraging.  No wonder we are told by the Association of Theological Schools that 45% of all seminary graduates drop out of ministry within five years of graduating. You have been in this school long enough to have learned something of the realism of your calling.  And you have not come this route for personal glory or temporal gain.  I’m impressed by this beautiful carving on the pulpit of Jesus calling his disciples.  May you, too, know the fulfillment that they discovered when they obeyed his command, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Our goal is not to make displaced persons feel comfortable in their “displacedness,” but to bring D. P.s home: home to a place in the Family, a place in the Body and a place in the Glory.  God has called us not to be people pleasers, but to be people placers.  And our Lord will bless you richly as you fulfill the ministry of putting people in their place, the ministry of bringing D. P.s home!

Amen.

Top of Page     Home