Graduation. Maybe it seems eons away, or maybe it is right around the corner for you. No matter where you are in your homeschool journey, are you educating your children with the end in mind? What are you preparing your children for? Who are you trusting for guidance along the way?
Our support group holds a beautiful graduation ceremony in May of each year. This year, covid-19 has distrupted those plans, and the ceremony has been postponed until later in the summer if conditions allow. Thinking about all the 2020 graduates, with their celebrations upended and the future unsure, has me thinking back to all the past graduations I have both witnessed and participated in, including the homeschool graduations of all five of my children. Our homeschool graduation ceremony is unique because the 30 or 40 students aren’t graduating all from one school, but from 30 or 40 individual schools. The parents are the ones who speak words of congratulation, encouragement, affirmation or blessing to their graduate as they present him or her with a diploma.
This ceremony is such a moving and powerful testimony to the faithfulness and grace of our God, evident in the dedication, trust, hard work, and love exemplified by these homeschool parents who have reached the finish line of this leg of the parenting race. The future plans of these graduates have included college, the military, the workforce, the mission field. Their aspirations have included social work, nursing, computer science, aviation, filmmaking, biochemistry, graphic design, performing arts, business, teaching, writing, speech therapy, missions, skilled trades, exercise science, cyber security, cosmetology, and law enforcement. This year’s graduates join those who have gone before them, joining a “peculiar people”, set apart from the crowd, forging a new path, given a unique heritage.
Graduations make me cry and also give me hope. This year we may not be watching them enter the auditorium to “Pomp and Circumstance” or applauding as they turn their tassels, but we are cheering them on nonetheless. As Christians, our hope is in the Lord, that his plans are good and that his work will continue in the lives of each of these young people for the glory of his Kingdom, for the rest of their lives. I see God at work in the lives of the graduates I’ve known over the past 17+ years and know that “he who began a good work in [them] will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” ! (Phil. 1:6)
Hold onto that hope as you educate your children and train them up in the Lord, on the good days and especially on the tough days.
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Isaiah 40:31 “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Psalm 24:4-5 “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for your are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
