Graduation Time!

I remember the white gowns and the tasseled cap.  I remember there were some of my classmates who had colored cords around their necks (I was not one of them).  I remember the walk into the auditorium from the outside.  I remember the sound of the graduation music as we entered the spacious room. 

I remember the frog in my throat.  I remember the excitement in my body.  I remember feeling like an adult.  I remember my name being called.  I remember tossing my cap and yelling at the top of my lungs.  I was a high school graduate!

It was the signal that I was about to launch out on my own.  Everything was going to be just as I wanted it from that moment on.  I was going to do whatever I wanted.  I was moving away from home to start my college career and subsequent working life.

Now I know more intimately than I could have known then that graduation is not an ending; it is a beginning.  It is even more true with college graduation.  It is the beginning of life as an adult making adult decisions without as much parental control.

So, what kind of adult decisions will graduates make?  They will decide what they will study in college.  They will decide what job to take.  They might even decide whom to marry or whether to accept a marriage proposal.

However, the most important decision they will ever make is the decision that Joshua called Israel to make.  “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” (Joshua 24:15).  Notice that Joshua did not say, “Choose whether you will serve…”  It is a given that you will serve someone.  You will either serve God or, by default, you will have chosen to serve Satan.  It is all up to you to make the proper adult decision.

There is another thing to remember about graduation.  Spiritual graduation day for Christians never comes in this life.  We will graduate from many things in this life.  We will graduate out of various programs of study we take throughout our lives.  We will “graduate” out of the types of things we did when we were much younger. 

However, we will never graduate spiritually in this life.  Spiritual maturity is not about reaching the point of graduation and into a time that we can bask in the glow of that graduation in this physical plane.  For a Christian, graduation means moving on to the life eternal with God and all graduates who have gone there as well. 

Graduates, while you go on from this moment into whatever comes your way, make sure that you concentrate on your continuing spiritual life.  There will always be room for improvement.  You will never graduate from that until this life is over.

-Mike Johnson