June 10: A SALUTE TO GRADUATES

If you can read this, thank your teacher. Is that original with me? No, I read it on a bumper sticker. Which means? Right! I graduated. Graduation is about moving on, a rite of passage, or being suddenly thrust into the adult world.
The American culture is strange that way. As long as you are a student, certain allowances are made for you because you are a “student”. You can make a fool of yourself in campus riots or weekend drinking parties and people will sigh and say “they are just students.” Then, in one hour of ceremony you are given a sheet of finely engraved paper and you are supposed to radically change and become more mature in your outlook.
Remember what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11 ? “When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.”
There will be a lot of young people who will long to return to the child-state-of-being in the next few weeks as adults try to force them to stop being childish. The liberty and independence (long desired by teen-agers) of adulthood carries a very heavy cost of responsibility.
Perhaps David was reminiscing about his youth when he said, “but I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:2) These young graduates need a lot of help. The insulated world of study has given some a feeling of invincibility and many will be hurt this summer because of it.
Teach your graduate to pray, they need to pray. For example, teach them this prayer: “Lord, turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me.” (Psalm 31:2) Give them something practical for a graduation gift, like a Bible. It will last hem a lifetime, long after the diploma has faded.

“Dear God, may these graduates be wise enough to know that they cannot
make it through life successfully without You. Amen”