Lift Up Your Hearts

Are you a past person or a future person? John Irvine, (E 62) Dean of Coventry, suggested that there are those with regrets, guilt, a sense of missed opportunity, for whom life is dominated by the past and its sorrows. Most of those in the Chapel for the Commemoration, he went on to surmise, are future people, looking forward to something that is to come, hopeful for the future, though possibly also a bit fearful of what it might bring. Christ calls us to live for today. Do not put off the moment of responding to the call which the Lord has for us all. Do not say that there are exams at the moment or the pressures of work or a young family or tasks. Nor, if you are a past person say that the opportunity is passed. The Good Shepherd offers us  his help and support now.

Henry Olonga, who said at speech day: It does not matter how smooth the road,
if your car has square wheels you will have a bumpy ride

Going on from Chapel to the Sports Hall for the speeches we settled down to listen to Henry Olonga. Henry was a Zimbabwean international cricketer who protested against Robert Mugabe's regime by wearing a black armband in a test against England. That gesture cost him everything. Henry now lives in exile in London. He inspired the hall with his wit and wisdom, encouraging the young to respect their teachers, to work hard, to keep uo their sport and present themselves well, and to make the Choice. Having said a lot about what makes a person successful he then put it all in perspective. There is no point in being successful unless you have chosen to live not for yourself but for others, not for selfish aims but for what is right, in the end not for the world, but for God.

The Master had earlier said that education is a never ending process which is reminiscent of a man who runs always to reach the horizon; nobility lies not in reaching the end but in the journey and in the way we travel. When a man like Henry Olonga tells you to be strong to stand up for what is right, without directly referring to his own stand, his moral courage gives huge weight to his words. he speaks not simply from theory but from the cost of his own sacrifice. When he points to the source of strength which enabled that sacrifice, the one sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world which Christ made on the cross and to which the Dean had pointed us, we sit up and listen.

The Heads of School, Rebecca Simmons and Harry Hughes-D'Aeth rounded things off. Harry reminded us of the Hearts on the coat of arms. Haileyburians should have open hearts for others; expansive hearts open to new things; hearts full of love. Rebecca spoke of the wings, the support of those around us; the lifting up which we all need.

Lift up your hearts; we lift them to the Lord; for He stoops down and raises us up to glory.