My Prayer for our Students

This time of year we are celebrating our graduates and their achievements. They have toiled, studied, and completed coursework to arrive at this time of recognition of their efforts and achievements. We pause to celebrate their preparation and beginning of a new phase of life. Graduation is not an endpoint. It is the beginning.

As much as we look to graduation as the completion of a series of levels and stages, it is a launching pad-commencement into a new stage of life beyond the one just completed. It is a sign of transition to a new phase of life. It was always hard for me to associate my graduations with new beginnings. It seems much more natural to consider the closing of a chapter in life. Yet graduation is that celebration at the threshold-the turning of a page into life beyond the open door.

Listen: “Trust in the Lord”—the Lord— “with all your heart.” Do not try and figure it out on your own basis. “In all your ways acknowledge him.” He will make your paths straight.

My prayer for our students today:
Father, seal your Word to us, Lord, we pray—something here said, thought, pondered. Each of these young people represents so many more. And we thank you that the crazy world in which we live is a world of challenge, but it is also a world of opportunity. Christian young people have the greatest adventure of all. They have a Lord and a King. They have a story to tell that penetrates the empty meaninglessness of life that is lived purely for our own agendas. And so, I pray that you will strengthen and equip them with everything good. And for all of us—because whether we are seventeen or ninety, the challenges remain the same: keep our eyes on you; keep our story simple; remove anything that blocks us from you. We ask by the empowerment of God and by the guidance of his Word, that all my heart, and all my ways be under your care. ​

In Jesus Name
Amen

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