Dear Friends,
Whenever I hear "Pomp and Circumstance"" played at graduations I always tear up and become emotional. Perhaps it is because some of my best years where in high school and I hated to leave those surroundings. I know that for many people high school is something you would just as soon forget, but for me it was a great time. It was after high school that I began a slide that took me into some dark places and it took many years and difficult work to rise up to the level that I could once again see and feel the sunshine. June is graduation month and many of our young members will be graduating from secondary school. They will scatter to all ends of the earth and will begin another phase of their lives. As I think about it we all experience many graduations.
We graduate from high school and then from either college or the military and then we begin our first full time job. We graduate from single hood to married life and then to parenting. We ultimately graduate from middle age adulthood into the "golden years" of maturity. Depending on which phase you find yourself you may think this is the most difficult but I kind of imagine we need to live them all before deciding. Each is specific and unique unto itself. For some of us who are moving into evening of our lives, it is interesting that we often remember more about the past than the present. It is not uncommon to find oneself sharing medical issues with friends and comparing treatments and operations. As so many have said, the golden years is often more about patching than anything else.
Yet, how blessed we are. We all have more than we need and we have been born into a free land where we, all too often, take our freedoms for granted. Stop for a moment and think about what phase of life you presently find yourself. Give thanks for your life and enjoy each day.
My prayer for our young people is that in the next few years they will remember, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in, that God is always aware of them and loving them. He won't straighten the curves in life's road nor level the valleys or hills but He will empower them and assist them in making that road less difficult to travel. Just think, if a young person opens his or her heart to God at a young age, when they reach the mature "golden years" they will have shared the journey of life with a close friend who has never stopped loving them. What a wonderful way to approach the final phase of life.
Faithfully,
