Graduations: Changes and Challenges

Our oldest daughter has graduated from college! Wow, I know it sounds so cliche, but it truly does seem like yesterday I was crying when she graduated from preschool! I can remember vividly my sorrow at the fact that she was growing up and away from me and getting ready to enter elementary school--boy, how little I knew how quickly the years would fly by. And now she is a godly young woman who sets her own schedule and earns her own money and, incredibly, does her own laundry (something I cannot say for the rest of her siblings!). It is such a bittersweet feeling--such joy at God's undeserved goodness and faithfulness as evidenced in my daughter's life, but yet mingled with sadness that she is grown and entering a new chapter of her life that will increasingly relegate me to the sideline. I don't like that at all. In fact, I don't think I like graduations!

I don't like change. Never have. Transitions have always been, well, to put it in as positive a way as possible, challenging for me. I'd just as soon travel along in a nice, secure, unchanging rut all my life. Keep the people I love safe and close by me. Avoid hard, unpredictable challenges and changes that threaten to swamp my little boat or, more frighteningly, the boats of those I love. Keep 'em close. Keep 'em safe. Keep 'em successful and secure.

Ever notice God doesn't work that way? Just as soon as we start to get comfortable, He changes things, moves us around, throws in those curve balls. He refuses to let us live in that rut, comfortable, secure, and usually utterly independent of Him. Put me in that rut and the next thing you know, I'm just forging ahead on autopilot. I somehow seem to get so busy zipping along in my rut, that I don't have time to read His Word or seek Him in prayer. I'm so busy with my own comfortable agenda, that I fail to seek His will and His way. I get so preoccupied with my little world that I forget to be preoccupied with Him and His greatness. And then I wonder why I lose my joy, my peace, my patience, my love. I've stopped abiding in Him.

So I thank Him that He sends us challenges and changes to shake us and wake us. I'm reminded anew how great a sinner I am and yet how great a Saviour He is, and He floods me with gratitude. I remember that I can do nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from Him, but in Him, I can do all things (Phil.4:13). I recall that He wants to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2Cor.10:5) so that I, moment by moment, surrender my thoughts to Him and choose to focus on that which is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent (Phil.4:8). Even in the midst of upheaval and change and difficulty, I can choose what to think, and when I think of Him and His Word and His ways, then those challenges prove a means of growing closer to and stronger in Him. God doesn't send those changes to swamp our boat but to push our boat nearer to Him and enjoy the abundant life sailing along with Him.

I am reminded of one of my favorite passages: I Thess. 5:16-18 "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Lord, this is what we choose today. And we know that tomorrow, with it's new set of changes and challenges, we will have to choose to live out again, moment by moment, I Thess. 5:16-18. But help us choose to be joyful even when those challenges make us uncomfortable or even sorrowful. Help us to pray every day, every moment. Make prayer our first response and not our last resort. And Lord, make us grateful people! Help us to see Your gracious hand behind every blessing in our lives and then help us to express our overflowing gratitude to You, our extravagant Lord. Might our lives be living, daily songs of joy, prayer and praise as we sail along with You. And to You be all the glory forever and ever. Amen