Set your sights on the God whom we know in Jesus Christ. Koppel went on to challenge the graduates to faith in God and the moral guidance of the ten commandments. I caution you - as one who performs daily on that flickering altar, to set your sights beyond what you can see.4 There have always been imperfect role models false gods of material success and shallow fame, now their influence is magnified by television. Ted Koppel reminded Duke University graduates: What was lost had become the bank into which all their hopes were deposited.
A prominent businessman goes bankrupt and shoots himself. A senior citizen ends it all after hearing the news of cancer. A teenager overdoses because her boyfriend ends their relationship. The tragedy of suicide deepens because it involves misdirected hope. The jailed moved from a hopeless, no-exit situation to hope in Jesus Christ. “What must I do to be saved?”, he eagerly inquired. Paul stopped a suicide: “Do not harm yourself, we are all here.” Seeing the apostles could have escaped but stayed the jailer realized these Christians had something he needed. “He drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing the prisoners had escaped.” The situation offered no exit for the jailer! Entrusted with the care of the prisoners, all was now lost. Gaping holes were left in his jail - exits for every prisoner. The Philippian jailer was awakened by the rumblings of an earthquake. It offers a door out of hopelessness.Īcts 16 records an example. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.”2 Suicide seems the only way out.Īlbert Camus said, “Killing oneself amounts to confessing. Overcome with intolerable despair the individual feels trapped in a “no exit” situation. Helmut Thielicke says, “There are many suicides - not because people have too little money or suffer disappointments in love but because they lost the meaning of life and see themselves confronted by a black wall.”1 There appears to be no solution for the problems they face. I grew up hearing, “Where there is life, there’s hope.” It should be, “Where there is hope, there is life.”Ī person without hope loses the will to live. Were it not for the grace of God in Christ there would be even more suicides. Only our faith in Christ offers release and life for each of these needs. No one is exempt from the temptations of hopelessness, loneliness, and self-will. “Look to yourself, lest you, too, be tempted” ( Galatians 6:1). Each of us face these painful experiences. From the victims come the painful cries of hopelessness, loneliness, and self-will. There are probably as many causes for suicide as there are victims. Every day we could well lower the flag in memory of those who lost the will to live and died by their own hands. On Memorial Day flags fly at half-staff in remembrance of armed forces killed by the enemy.
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