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God's Gift to Graduates |
2009-05-04 |
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I graduated from Wayne High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1975 with a class of over three hundred. I was not eager to graduate, which perhaps makes me strange. I was in no hurry to leave my home and my friends and an environment where I felt comfortable and safe. I graduated in June, and had only a month before I was to enter West Point on the seventh of July. The future was exciting and a bit frightening, and I was beginning to realize that I would never live at home again. I would only be a visitor. I was the oldest of five boys, and it was especially hard for my mother (my father didn't reveal too much of what he was feeling) because she knew that she would never have all of her children living at home together again. My graduation was the beginning of the end of our family as we had always known it. We would become more and more scattered, and would only be together for brief and infrequent occasions. So I mostly felt sad when I graduated from High School. I felt the same four years later, on the sixth of June, 1979 when I graduated from West Point. I loved where I was and didn't want to leave. But one of the things that graduations taught me was that adult life is all about change, and sometimes leaving behind things and people you love (or having them leave you), and constantly moving forward and accepting those changes.
We have Sirius/XM radio in our vehicles, and channel seven is all 70's music. As I listen to those songs the years melt away and I am back in junior high or high school or college. Those songs are over thirty years old, but they still sound new to me. How have the last thirty to forty years gone by so quickly? I hated leaving home at eighteen, and have now lived almost twice as long on my own as I did with my parents and brothers. I have my own children now, and as a pastor have baptized and confirmed many others, and they are now growing up and beginning to go off to college.
Two things occur to me every year around graduation. The first is how quickly time passes, and how as we grow older we realize more and more how brief life is. We don't really appreciate being young until we aren't young anymore. We can't hold time back or slow it down, whether it be our life, or our children, or our grandchildren. God has given us the time we have as a gift, and if we don't realize and appreciate that we will waste it. The second thing that occurs to me is that we have no idea how our life is going to turn out. When I graduated from High School and the Military Academy I assumed that I would have a military career. I never in my wildest imagination thought that thirty years later I would be a pastor in Milbank, South Dakota beginning my third decade of ministry. Thousands of years ago the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed to God's people, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
We entrust our high school and college graduates to their loving Lord and Savior, who has definite plans for each of them. We also entrust our own futures to the same Lord, even as we have traveled farther down the road of faith,knowing that through all its peaks and valleys, He has plans to prosper and not harm us, plans to give us hope and a future. May God bless you members of the Class of '09, as he has blessed all of us who have gone before. |
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Summer: starting Memorial Day Weekend
9:00 am Worship Service KMSD Broadcast
10:00 am Coffee and Fellowship
WOW (Worship on Wednesday) 6:30 pm
Winter: starting after Labor Day
8:30 am Worship Service KMSD Broadcast
9:35 am Educational Hour
9:35 am Coffee and Fellowship
10:45 am Worship Service
WOW (Worship on Wednesday) 6:30 pm |
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401 South Flynn Drive
Milbank SD 57252
605.432.5566 |
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