June Devotional - Graduation Day

June is a month to remember milestones, especially Graduation Day.  My home church always uses this month to recognize our children moving up a grade in Kid’s Church, and to honour our high school and college grads.  The photo below is of my youngest granddaughter, Gracie, when she graduated from Wee College, a 3 year Bible training program.  You can see it in her face - Graduation Day should always stir up gratitude for past accomplishments and hope for an even better future.

Unfortunately, reality can often burst the bubble of youthful ideals. You have to smile at this story I heard at a recent graduation ceremony:  Having just graduated from Yale, a young man is fired up to meet his best friend for lunch and map out their futures.  He opens his Uber app and calls for a ride. The car shows up, the young man hops in, and the driver says, “Nice day. How you doin’?” The graduate replies, “I just got my diploma from Yale. I’m off to go conquer the world.” The driver comes back with, “Congrats! Nice to meet ya. I’m Howie, Yale 1999.” 

As we live our lives, putting one foot in front of the other, we really have such a limited view of the horizon in front of us.  Today at Buchanan, when I wrote this, we had just finished singing one of our most requested hymns, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”. The story behind this great song is fascinating: Thomas Chisholm, who wrote the hymn, trained well to become a minister but on the day of his hope-filled graduation he had no idea his career would last only one year.  Chronic illness led to a life of being cared for, selling insurance when healthy enough, but ultimately spending much of his adult life in a nursing home.  Yet, his gratitude to God inspired this line from the hymn’s last verse:

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand beside. “Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!” Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided - “Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!

The best advice we can find about graduations at every stage of life comes from the highly educated St. Paul, inspired by God Himself, when he wrote:  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).

“Heavenward” - now that’s a “graduation day” we should all look forward to!