Veritas

I mentioned yesterday that Clark and I drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts last week to attend his brother and sister-in-laws graduation from Harvard. I had been to Yale and Princeton, but this was my first trip to Harvard. As you would expect, it was beautiful and full of history. We went for a run by the Charles River and I got to re-enact the running scene from "With Honors." I felt smarter just being there.

Anyway, the Harvard mantra is Veritas, which means truth. The word is printed all over campus on every post, pillar and written document. As we went from ceremony to ceremony the speakers reflected on truth and what this means and how we understand it and how we seek it. No one said anything about Jesus. It started to really bug me by the end of the festivities (it's not like I was expecting it, but still...). It was at the moment of my greatest irritation when I made a stunning discovery that put everything back in perspective.

The graduation was set up on the steps of Memorial Chapel in the middle of Old Harvard Yard. They had blocked the front doors and pillars with a backdrop and there was a huge tent spanning over the platform, podium and speakers. There were trees throughout the yard so looking straight ahead all you could see was what looked like the front of an assembly. However, if you let your eyes wander straight up, rising high above the trees, into the sky and far above the heads of the esteemed speakers was the high steeple adorned with the cross of Jesus Christ.

The ultimate irony. Unspoken and unacknowledged as some of the brightest minds in our world reflected on truth was the cross rising high above. I smiled and I think I even giggled a little to myself.

We can deny God, we can ignore God, we can pretend to have the world figured out separate and apart from God, but God is always there. Veritas = Jesus.