In 1980, the first Tuesday in May was designated Teacher Appreciation Day. In 1985, the day was expanded to a week.

Parents who have been homeschooling their children because of the coronavirus pandemic are probably ready to celebrate teachers for the rest of the year. In his now-viral YouTube series, Some Good News, John Krasinski stated: “We here at SGN would like to start a petition that all teachers get paid 1.71 million dollars. Per day.”

CNN notes: “If there has ever been a time when appreciation for teachers is sky high, it is now. With the coronavirus pandemic closing schools, parents are now de facto homeschool teachers, discovering just how hard it is to teach.”

The article lists socially distanced ways we can thank teachers for their work, from social media campaigns to yard signs, thank-you parades, purchasing e-gift cards, and funding school supplies online.

The challenge of these days, of course, is that teachers require students. Teaching is a means to the end of educating those who are taught. Teachers do not speak into the air as though their words had some independent value. They measure success by the degree to which those they teach are able to understand and apply what they learn.

Baseball games with robots playing drums in the stands 

Professional baseball games are being played in Taiwan. However, players must submit to temperature checks several times a day. Cardboard cutouts and plastic mannequins have replaced the fans in the stands. A five-member band of robots plays drums from the stands.

But it’s not the same. One team’s manager said, “It just lacks a bit of energy, that kind of excitement of a real game.” He offers his players “imagination training” in the dugout, encouraging them to envision fans watching the games from their televisions at home. He tells them, “Maybe they are not here but they are still in front of television and cheering for us.”

One could argue that baseball doesn’t need fans in the stands to be baseball. Nothing on the field has changed. Wins and losses are recorded; players get hits or pitchers get outs. Batting averages and pitching statistics are being compiled.

But baseball was never intended as an end in itself. It creates no objective good for society. The games do not produce food, energy, or other necessities. The purpose of baseball, like that of other sports, is to entertain the fans who watch.

Three essential facts about God

Like teachers and baseball players, you and I were made to serve others by a God who serves us. Jesus testified that he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Observing Teacher Appreciation Week: Our lives are best lived for others →

Tom Hanks delivered a virtual commencement address last weekend for the graduates of Ohio’s Wright State University. He called them the “chosen ones” in part because of the pandemic that has changed our lives so dramatically.

The actor explained: “You are the chosen ones because of a fate unimagined when you began your Wright State adventures.” As a result, he predicted, “You will be enlightened in ways your degree never held in promise. You will have made it through a time of great sacrifice and great need. No one will be more fresh to the task of restarting our normalcy than you—our chosen ones.”

What Warren Buffett thinks about our future 

Yesterday was Star Wars Day with its annual slogan, “May the Fourth be with you.” But today is also special for Star Wars fans, since the fifth rhymes with Sith (the ancient enemies of the Jedi Order).

The Star Wars universe has been a cultural phenomenon for more than four decades in large part because of its assurance that “the Force will be with you, always.” This “Force,” however, is not a personal God but, as Obi-Wan Kenobi explained, an impersonal “energy field created by all living things.” It is available to us as we seek to defeat the “dark side.”

In this sense, the Star Wars worldview reinforces and amplifies our belief in ourselves. A single Jedi knight can destroy a Death Star. People passionately committed to good can defeat those committed to evil.

What Tom Hanks told the graduates of Wright State University is what Americans believe about ourselves: we can persevere through pain and triumph over tragedy. Warren Buffett made the same optimistic claim during a recent company shareholders meeting: “Nothing can basically stop America. The American miracle, the American magic, has always prevailed, and it will do so again.”

This can-do spirit fueled the pioneers who risked their lives and families to come to this New World, the settlers who pushed its frontiers from the East Coast to the West, and the entrepreneurs who built the greatest economic force the world has ever seen. Every time I travel overseas, I am deeply grateful to return to this country. My father and grandfather fought for our nation. I will always love America.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Tom Hanks’s virtual commencement address and Star Wars Day: Are you trusting the Force more than the Father? →

Wylie, Texas, is a town of fifty thousand people twenty-eight miles northeast of Dallas. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, none of the students graduating from Wylie High School will have a traditional graduation ceremony or other end-of-year events.

Since they could not come to the school, the school’s principal came to them. All 612 of them.

Virdie Montgomery spent 80 hours driving 800 miles over 12 days to visit each high school senior at their home. He explained, “The most valuable gift any of us can give anyone that isn’t replaceable is time. Where one spends one’s time says a lot about what they value.”

One of the seniors told CNN, “It kind of shows people that somebody does care for you out there. Most principals wouldn’t do that.”

Hiker posing for photo falls to her death 

COVID-19 is affecting everyone, even those it does not infect. Some responses are positive, as Principal Montgomery shows. Others are tragic.

A hiker celebrating the end of her area’s coronavirus pandemic posed for a cliffside photo in Antalya, Turkey. She climbed over a safety fence to take the picture on the edge of a cliff in front of its scenic waterfalls. She then slipped on grass and fell roughly 115 feet to her death.

The US aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman began its deployment last November before the coronavirus outbreak began. Its 4,500 crew members are thus free of infection. As a paradoxical result, they cannot go home to their families because their ship is too valuable to end its deployment.

The hope is that once the Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group is up and running, the crew of the Truman can finally come home. But no one knows when that day will come.

Continue reading Denison Forum – High school principal visits 612 graduating seniors: Reframing the depth of the pandemic to experience God in depth →