Celebrating Our Graduates

This coming Sunday we are going to be celebrating the graduation of a number of our own high school and post-secondary students here at SDBC. And what we are celebrating is not only the huge milestone achievement this is for our grads, but God's goodness and faithfulness in how he has provided, and will continue to provide, for these young people. Graduating is not just the end of a journey but the beginning of something new. As these grads make the transition out of their time of study, they are also making a transition into adulthood (or a new chapter of adult life for those graduating from post-secondary). And as they make this transition, it's important to remember what this transition can feel like for many of us.

I don't know about you, but when I started my post-secondary schooling, I thought I would emerge from it with far more confidence. But my experience with graduating was actually the opposite. Having now just graduated myself, I feel that I have more questions and less certainty than ever before. And I think that for many of us that is what it looks like as we get deeper into our adult lives. We realize that however much we may want things to be black and white, there is a lot of grey in our world. And even as we come to know more and more things, we become aware of just how much we don't know. This is what many of our grads will experience in the coming months and years. It will be a season of exciting new learning, but also big challenges and probably lots of confusion and discomfort along the way.

So as our graduates make this transition, some of them even leaving home for the first time in their lives, may we as a church family see it as our responsibility to care for and uphold them. Maybe that looks like holding them in prayer, sending a quick message to check in or, when you see them in church, walking up and asking them how they are doing. Maybe for those of us who are closer to these grads, it means being willing to patiently listen as they share about the messiness of trying to navigate this new season of life while feeling like they don't have the answers. As we honour and lift up our grads in prayer this Sunday, may this not just be a one-time act, but a time of remembering God's ongoing faithfulness to these grads and committing ourselves to loving them with the grace of Jesus in the season to come.