King Baldwin IV: Come forward. I am glad to meet Godfrey's son. He was one of my greatest teachers. He was there when, playing with the other boys, my arm was cut. It was he, not my father's physicians, who noticed that I felt no pain. He wept when he gave my father the news... that I am a leper. The Saracens say that this disease is God's vengence against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, these Arabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that's true, I call it unfair. Come. Sit.
King Baldwin IV: [Baldwin chuckles] When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.
4 Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. During my junior year of high school, I joined the debate team. I had a free period that year. I had a lot of friends who had been in debate, and it sounded like a lot of fun. When I got into the debate team, I gravitated toward one event, in particular an event called Student Congress. which was a mock legislative session where the debate part of it happened in speeches for and against the various pieces of mock bills and mock resolutions that were offered in that chamber.
Now I found this a ton of fun, but I had also brought out a very competitive streak in me. I worked really hard to prepare for these tournaments. Now, some of my preparation was obvious and straightforward. I researched as much as I could thoroughly. So even a lot of times I would have speeches both for and against different issues so that depending on the way the day was and where I had opportunities to give speech, I was prepared either way to give a speech. Then I also practiced for hours my speeches in front of a mirror. It was some of my first public speaking experience and I worked really hard to see what I looked like and sounded like when I was giving these speeches.
I remember one day, it was right here in Omaha about twenty one years ago, when suddenly it dawned on me that I was missing a key part of preparation that wasn't obvious. In fact, it was kind of counterintuitive, but I needed to be doing it if I wanted to do better than I had been doing. I realized these were long days of debate and I had to be on all day in this particular setting. It was an all-day event and you had to be really on the entire time. I was driving from Hastings, Nebraska, with a bus of other students and so we had to leave it, you know, four or five in the morning to get here, to compete so long days. By 2:30 in the afternoon, I started to fade. My physical energy was fizzling. I realized that's when all of the judges are finalizing their opinions of where to vote you. So I realized I had to find a way to get energy in the afternoon.
So even though I wasn't a high school athlete, I began to train like I was. I changed what I ate. I changed the amount of water I drink. That was the first time I really started exercising with any kind of regularity. It was because, not I was an athlete, but because I was in debate. I had to work very hard to try to prepare in any way that I possibly could, even