Wallace ready to speak

Director prepared to address graduates

Randall Wallace, a forest ranger?

“When I was a senior I went down to the career counseling center and answered questions about my future, and they told me I should be a forest ranger,” Wallace said. “It is such a good struggle — it is a struggle, but it’s like teenagers, it is so awkward to be 13 years old, but its supposed to be and if you short circuit that you don’t grow up.”

Wallace will be giving the commencement speech to graduating students May 14. He hopes to share with the graduating seniors not a lesson but an experience.

“One of the key messages I want to bring to the graduates at Liberty commencement is that when things seem to be going wrong you may in fact be living exactly in the plan of God and all things work together for good for those who love the Lord,” Wallace said.

Wallace said he could easily identify with Liberty students, coming from a similar place not in terms of geography but in terms of perspective.

“I want them to feel the encouragement and the affirmation and the challenge in their own lives that they may find from learning from my experience,” Wallace said. “I want to share with them what my journey has been so they can take from that the possibilities of whatever adventures lie before them.”

Wallace is an acclaimed writer and director, lending his name to films like Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, Secretariat and A Few Good Men.

“Growing up in Virginia, I lived with the sense that the past is not gone — that our traditions are alive now,” Wallace said. “We are in a timeless world and the things that matter — love, courage and honor — are things that don’t pass away. I don’t think of myself as writing about ancient values, but I think of myself as telling stories about timeless values.”

According to Wallace, his work is not for his own understanding of God but instead an expression of the spirit of God.

“To reference C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, (he said) that the world will become more Christian as individual Christians live more Christian lives,” Wallace said.