jeffrey robert lange

I don’t appreciate mindless babbling. Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which is the celebration of his life and his birth. After reading the writings of Dr. King, I have formed a high level of respect and admiration for the man. King is very observant, smart, and has a great deal of tact. Here at Valparaiso University, we had no class today, but some of us were required to attend the Convocation service held in the Chapel at 10 am and another focus session. I happily agreed to attend both of these, but I was expecting to hear something that would be thought provoking and inspirational.

My feelings are that if you bring up a problem that you must offer a solution at the very least. The solution does not need to be completely perfect, but it must make some sense. Maybe an example will help clear up my point.

Everyone knows that we need to end world hunger, but what good comes from restating this ordeal to educated college students? We all know it is a problem. If you want to be respected by an audience, it is imperative that you propose a solution to the problem you mention. I can only remember one sentence that gained my interest in the whole keynote speech at the convocation ceremony.

On the other hand, I have five fingers. (I have always wanted to say that, and who says I can’t have a sense of humor? It’s my blog!) But seriously, Prof. Stephen Marc did an excellent job at attaining my attention, and I have a great deal of respect for the man.

What I am not saying is that Dr. Carruthers is a bad person, a bad speaker, or a non-important person. What I am saying is that the speech that she gave this morning was not what I had expected and let me down. I feel that others from the University feel the same way as well.

I forgot to keep up with this… so I’ll try to make up for this big mess. I had an awesome Christmas. I got to see a lot of my old friends, like Jackie Kenyon, Chris, and some other people from Michigan Lutheran High School, but the reason I saw all of these people is not such an uplifting story. My good friend Jay Brenner has had some trouble with cancer lately. Keep in mind he is only 16. This kid has a lot of gusto, though. I don’t think I could handle all of the things that he has been going through. He was at the hospital the week after New Year’s, so I was going to go to a basketball game between my school and his, but I decided that seeing Jay in the hospital was MUCH more important. His older sister, Stefanie, was there (for obvious reasons) and so were mom and dad Brenner. I spent most of the time comforting and reassuring Stef, mainly because she was tired and upset and because most of the people that were there were Jay’s family or classmates, so we didn’t want to interrupt or be a nuisance. We did pop in Jay’s room and hang around when things were quiet, though.
Anyways, Jay is at home now, Stefanie is back at college, I’m at home, my family is doing well, and I might go shopping tomorrow. Hopefully I can get my hands on Guitar Hero 2!

Let me first start out with a little story to catch your imagination. There is a girl that lives in a perfect world. Every day is happy. Every day is exactly what you would want it to be. When you wake up, everything is great. You have just gotten the best sleep of your life, but that’s how it is every night. All of your work is done because someone else does it for you. A nice hot meal is ready on the table for you. Sounds good right about now, doesn’t it?

By now you have the picture in your mind, the picture of perfection. It would be really nice if you had all of these things. I’m sure that we would all appreciate it. But the girl in our story doesn’t. Why? Because she has never seen anything different. Perfection is the only thing that she has ever known. Every day that she has been alive has been perfect. She doesn’t know what fail, bad, pain, or suffering means or what they feel like. If I was to give the girl something perfect, eh, so what. That’s just the norm for her.

Ok, enough with our little story. If I was to give you, yes you, $100, you would probably thank me. Why? Because you either need or want that money. Things are probably popping into your head of what you could do with the extra cash. There have been times in your life that haven’t been the best, and money was a little tough to come by. You would remember those tough times (even if they were happening right now) and appreciate what I am doing for you. With pain, you see how good you have it when you get something nice. You appreciate because of pain.

Now, let’s say (again, totally hypothetical situation here) that I gave you a mansion that’s totally paid for and I pay the taxes and all the utilities. You don’t have to pay anything. You might reject this gift because it seems to good to be true. I don’t want anything back for this gift, and actually, there is nothing you can do to pay me back. People would go crazy and start lining up to get these free houses. (Since this is a hypothetical situation, there are no real estate agents or other workers that would go out of business with me doing this. No bad comes from this gift.) All of the news stations would be reporting about how to get these free houses and probably a little background information on me. It would almost be impossible for you to not tell all of your family and friends about this remarkable gift.

Well, let me tell you about a person that loves you a lot. This person sent his son to die for you. How many friends do you have that would do that? And this son wasn’t bad, he was perfect. If you had a kid and he or she was perfect, I don’t think you would try to save someone by killing him. Now some of you know where I’m going with this, and if you don’t, it’s ok, there are BILLIONS of people just like you. Just let me get into some important information.

This person that loves you a lot, and that sent his son to die for your sake, his name is God. His son, his name is Jesus Christ. Christmas is coming up pretty soon, which reminds me, I need to do my shopping pretty soon. Anyways, Christmas isn’t about Santa, or Rudolph, or fancy trees, or anything like that. Christmas, my friend, is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth. If you want to learn more, go to the WELS website at http://www.wels.net or email me.

Every time thanksgiving passes, I always wonder what to get my family for Christmas. I don’t want to get a gift card for people because then it seems that I have done nothing or I forgot to get them something, so I ran out to the mall and picked up a gift card. I don’t want to buy clothes because I’ll probably buy the wrong size and I don’t want to offend anyone. Maybe I’ll just stick to chocolate… everyone loves chocolate, right?