This is not going to be an article about homeschooling, or the passage of time, or how quickly children grow up, but my oldest child graduated from high school last weekend.
The day was beautiful, and my take-away has been thankfulness that I can know what I’m sure of.
Launching a child into this cold world comes with a lot of attendant uncertainty. Birth felt like that, and so did graduation. Anything could happen.
When she was born, I chose Ephesians 2:8-9 as her life verse, knowing that just as by grace we are saved, so by grace the Lord would hold every day of her life in His hand. Now, she is an adult, old enough to choose her own life verses, old enough to choose what she is sure of.
When the Apostle Paul wrote to his “beloved child” Timothy, he wanted him to be sure of what he was sure of: “I know Whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me…”
Timothy’s spiritual inheritance was Paul’s assurance, and it served him well in a pagan empire where “all who desire to live a Godly life in Christ Jesus” were persecuted.
Once, a young man came to eat supper at my house with a group from our church. He was just a visitor, an acquaintance, but he had grown up in our community. I asked him who his mother was.
He blinked and swallowed. Then he said, “I’m not sure.”
He knew the name of the woman he had called mom and also the house where he had grown up, but he wasn’t sure if she was actually his mother or his auntie.
“I’m not really sure about anything,” he said.
He was homeless at the time and unsure about where his next meal would come from. Without a foundation, he had no starting point and no final destination.
There were several others gathered there around the table who had been homeless, who didn’t know one or both parents, who had wandered aimlessly through life, unsure of what would happen, but they jumped in to tell this young man what he could be sure of:
Jesus.
“I used to write out my own obituary, but now I write my testimony,” one of my visitors told the young man. “Jesus brought me from death to life.”
Paul reminded Timothy, “Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
No matter when you learned about Jesus, you can be sure of Him. He is immutable, constant, steadfast, no matter what is happening in the world around you.
He is a sure anchor for the graduate, the mother of the graduate, and everyone who turns to Him.
Sarah Dixon Young 