Graduation and Commencement

• This is graduation week for the local schools around here and this past Sunday we honored fifteen graduates, publically during our third service. But something struck me today as I began to write this piece. It is that graduation celebrations speak both of accomplishment and commencement. Graduation is the culmination of effort, yet it is also transition to a new beginning. We stop and celebrate the learning and preparation for life. We recognize the graduates efforts and accomplishments and we realize these students at 17, 18 or 19 have learned more about life than just what showed on a GPA score. During these years of education there has also been much in the character development department. We may stop and wonder where the time has gone from our own graduation day and we may have regret when we see how far we could have gone or how little we moved towards our dreams and goals. John Piper has written a book entitled, “Don’t Waste Your Life.” In it he states: God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work, not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives. God’s call is to more than graduate from anything – it is the call to commence. Commencement reminds us, no matter what our age, learning does not end with graduation, for life continues to lead us through opportunities for learning and growth. More difficult to grade and score, it is the character of our living that will determine our successes in life.
  
• Life is about much more than the amount of knowledge with which we fill our heads.
  
• Life requires the wisdom of appropriate response to opportunities in front of us.
  
• Life requires the ongoing pursuit of God’s will for our lives.Life requires the courage to respond correctly to the stresses of daily living.
  
• Life must be met with the desire to move forward and not stay stuck!
  

Moving, responding well, pursuing God’s wisdom and will – that is commencement.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds herself in need of direction. She is lost in a land she does not understand, amid creatures who do not behave as she expects. She desperately desires to return to the safety and comfort of home, but does not believe it is within her grasp. She places her energy into a journey to find the Wizard, who might send her on her way home. While the Wizard is unable to help, he does not tell her so. Only after facing various dangers is she to find that along with her friends, she has everything she needs in her own grasp. All they need has already been provided. The only thing they lack is the wisdom to recognize their gifting and accept their provision with confidence.
God has likewise gifted us with all that is necessary for full and meaningful living. God provides wisdom willingly and openly. God gives us the strength to move forward when we feel stuck or lost. God gives us His joy……go ahead and think of all the other things God provides for us so that we might commence in the direction He has called us to move into.
God in wisdom provides for all of our needs, even those things we believe we truly lack. Do we have the confidence to trust God’s wisdom to direct our lives? I pray that you will accept the wisdom God so provides, the courage He brings and the desire to glorify Him by moving forward. May we all graduate to the next thing God has for us and move towards becoming all He desires us to be.

Philippians 4:13
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God
has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

I trust you will move forward in your journaling each day and to listen to what God might reveal to you through His word. Some on our team at LFC are posting their journal entries online and desire to share them with you. You can access them here http://lfchurch.wordpress.com/ you can also learn more about the journaling process here http://lfchurch.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/how-to-journal/

I love being your pastor and growing right along with you,
Pastor Bernie