We conducted the commencement exercises for the Grace Community School Class of 2025 on Saturday night. This talented group of 84 students received over $8,131,231 in scholarship offers and were accepted to dozens of the finest colleges and universities in the country. More importantly, they leave here equipped to engage the world around them for the gospel of Jesus Christ, to love and serve him as his disciples where they live, work, and play. The following is my charge to the class.
I will be taking my customary break from blogging over the summer, but I pray you will have a peaceful, restful summer. I’m grateful you choose to read what I write occasionally or often. Thank you, and we’ll see you in the fall.
Some of you have been with us for 14 years, some less than that, but all of you have had the voices of coaches, teachers, and school leaders speaking God’s word and his truth to you over the time you have been here. As the head of your school, it’s my privilege to be the last voice you hear, giving you a word of encouragement and a charge as you leave our school.
I miss all of our graduates when they leave us, but, if I’m honest, some more than others. I will miss this class especially. The class of 2025 is a very bright class–Mr. Webb and I remarked the other day at how many of you lined up at the awards ceremony as students receiving honors. You are a gifted class: from watching JT throw a pass to McCade run the ball, to watching Daniel and Peyton shoot from the top of the key, to watching the beauty of Bella and Keely carrying the ball downfield, watching Lawson run, seeing Jake, or Abigail, or Seth, or Jenna worship through music, or hanging out with Wyatt in my office talking about leadership, and all the rest of you, you have been a joy to teach, to serve, and to love.
And now, as we part—for a small handful of you, this will be the last time I’ll ever see you, for others, it will be a minute—I want to leave you with three things I ask you’ll please remember as you leave here, and that I pray you’ll take with you, among all the other things we’ve taught you.
The first is a curious mind. Being curious is vital to learning. But, it’s also vital to loving. Being curious as a student, lover, and follower of Jesus is so important. It’s essential to ask the why and to know the answers about someone or something. Part of the reason there’s so much anger, hostility, and hate in our world is that people aren’t curious. How often do you hear someone say about other people not like them, “Why don’t they just …” followed by some overly-simplistic solution to the group’s problems, often a solution rooted in just becoming like the speaker? The “why don’t they just…” question isn’t a question. It’s actually a statement rooted in a lack of curiosity, complete with assumptions and judgment, and divorced from any reality. Another word for this phenomenon is “prejudice.”
Lack of curiosity is mainly fueled by intellectual laziness, not bothering to actually build relationships with people not like us, or giving the effort to learn what it’s like to walk in their shoes. Or, maybe we just don’t care enough about them to seek to understand or think we’re too busy to engage others and learn about them (which is another way of saying we don’t care). Or, maybe we’re just afraid–afraid of being criticized or shunned by those like us if we activate our curiosity, trying to put ourselves in the mind of others, asking “why”, building empathy.
The problem is that laziness, fear, and lack of love are all antithetical to the gospel. The gospel message is love, which requires curiosity, the willingness to ask “why?” Never be afraid to be curious, to ask “why.”
The second thing I hope you take away from here is a generous heart. 1 Tim. 6 encourages us to “do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for ourselves as a good foundation for the future, so that we may take hold of that which is truly life.” As parents and school people, sometimes we’re guilty of reinforcing the cultural norms of encouraging you to succeed and rewarding success as the world sees it. But, I pray we’ve also shown you that true success means living open-handed lives. As I did earlier, I could walk through each of you as a class and identify ways God has gifted and empowered you by his Holy Spirit to bless the world around you.
You don’t have to be a minister or a preacher- it’s great if you want to, but if you’re an entrepreneur or a welder, a designer or a doctor, a teacher or a mom, God calls you out to push back the darkness, to bring light to the world around you, to do great work that makes the world around you a better one, and advance his kingdom in doing it. In every gift he gives you- time, talent, money– is all of it available to the Lord, when and how he asks for it? Will you live with your hands open, with all of it available for his purposes, to give for his glory and for the good of others?
God created you to live this way. I read an article in The Atlantic the other day about student generosity. It said, “Concern for other people, generosity, promotes supportive relationships and helps prevent depression. Students who care about others also tend to see their education as preparation for contributing to society—an outlook that inspires them to persist even when studying is dull. In adulthood, generous people earn higher incomes, better performance reviews, and more promotions than their less generous peers. This may be because the meaning they find in helping others leads to broader learning, deeper relationships, and ultimately greater creativity and productivity.”
This is common grace insight, the way you were created to be. I’m not asking you to live generous lives so that you can benefit others, although you certainly will. I’m begging you so you will be happy and free.
Finally, I pray you’ll leave here with a spirit of peace. All year long we’ve been talking about being people of peace, of shalom, in right relationship with God, with others, with yourselves, and with creation around you. Before he left the disciples, Jesus told them
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” He knew they’d face trouble, persecution, and trial. That would be a part of their everyday existence. So, why was he calling them to peace?
Jesus knew, and was helping them understand something we’ve taught you, that I pray you’ll always take with you: that your peace, your shalom, is never defined by what happens around you. You can have all the money, power, and fame this world has to offer, and be in terrible turmoil–you’ve watched that happen, you know it’s true. Or, everything around you can be crumbling down, and you can be in complete shalom. You’re never going to be able to control what happens to you in college, or what happens to you in life, and the more you try to control it, the more anxiety and depression you create for yourself when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Shalom is about surrendering to Jesus and to his work in your life. To believe and trust that he knows you, loves you, and works through you. Shalom is about finding your people, surrounding yourself with one or two or twenty of God’s people who can walk alongside you and help you turn back to Jesus when you’re tempted to turn away, as you help them press into him, as well. Nothing will make you more attractive and interesting to the world around you than being a person of peace in a chaotic world.
So, I now charge you my young brothers and sisters in Jesus: have a mind that hungers and thirsts for righteousness, that constantly seeks to know why, that never assumes or presumes in ways that degrades, but always honors and respects; to live open-handed lives, that you may have generous hearts with gifts, talents, and treasure given to you by a Father who loves you, all to enjoy and share; and to be at peace in your spirt and soul and be bringers of peace to a world that desperately needs you.
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