A Message for Graduates

For those of you who have graduated or have had a child graduate from high school since I have been pastor of Northside, you have heard this before.  For those of you who have not, this is a story I usually tell the graduates at their lunch on Senior Sunday, like I will this coming Sunday.

My own experience of graduation from high school had it's highs and lows.  On a blustery May evening in 1978, on the football field of Yoakum High School, I was given an award from the local Rotary Club that I had not foreseen coming.  It was a shock, it was an honor, but that emotional high was short lived.  As I sat on the back row of the 144 seniors of my class, a violent gust of wind came down the field, I was able to just barely grab my hat as it flew off my head.  As I put it back in place, I realized the tassel was gone. I looked behind me toward the end zone, there was my tassel, headed for a touch down.  I did not think I had time to get it before my name was called to go receive by diploma so I had to let it be. As I went to get my diploma with no tassel a more humbling thought came to me, my tassel just amassed more yards on this field on a Friday night than I did playing four years of football.

Highs and  lows, I don't know about you, but my high school years were full of them, often very close together. It has been that way through the rest of life, but life does get better than high school. It is a good thing to know that God is there to help us handle both the ups and downs, the highs and the lows.  The longer I live, the better I see Him do that.  May God bless your highs and lows with his steady presence.

For the journey...