What Will You Contribute?

It is the end of May and 17 and 18 year olds are graduating from high school all over the world.  We have had somewhere near a dozen just from our church alone!  I always find it interesting to watch these young graduates as they begin to set their march out into what is going to become their world.

My grandson graduated this year and so we attended his graduation ceremony last week.  As those young men and women, still really mere children, marched into the ceremony two by two, I couldn't help but look at the multitude of expressions on their faces!  Their faces radiated everything from total confidence to shere terror.  There was also every other expression in between that said volumns of what these kids were feeling as they were about leave the confort of their high school class and enter into the world around them.

First of all, I have to salute those young men and women who were going into one branch of the military or another.  I believe there were a dozen from this class of 153 students.  They had already made up their mind to stand tall and contribute in many ways for the sake of their country.  Beyond that, I believe that every other student of that 153 students said they will be going off to college.  Many of them even named the direction they were going to go in their education.  Some were going into research, others in electical engineering and others, well, let's just say they had some really high hopes for themselves!

Being one who failed miserable in my years of college right out of high school, I look at some of their hopes with some sceptism!  I really do hope for the best, but I also have a high school class of my own to look back at all of our years of combined experience from there.  In my opinion, it is not whether you graduate from college at the top of your class, or even graduate from college that makes you successful!  What makes you successful in life is what you contribute to others around you.  High school graduates, you included my strappingly huge 6'4', 225 pound grandson, Isaiah, you need to look deep within yourself and ask, "Am I a giver or a taker?"  Have you spent the last years of your schooling draining energy from everyone around you or have given into their lives to make them better by knowing you?  What are your teachers from school saying about you now that you no longer are a student in school? Are they saying, Boy! Am I glad he/she is out of here. It was miserable having them in class!" Or are they saying, "So and so will sure be missed!  He/she contributed so much to class discussions, or to the feel in the room or to the joy of the class!"

As you go off on that path that will take you into your world around you, look at the people on either side of the path!  Do you see them as being there to make your world rock, or do you see them there for the purpose of you making a difference in their lives.  Can you be the one to develop a cure for cancer for those who are standing their afraid of what is coming next?  Are you there to put a smile on the face of a little boy who has no parents and has no idea of where his brothers and sisters are living.  Are you there to invent the next new kitchen gadget that will make a house wife's life much easier?  Again, my opinion, but life is better when it is all about contributing to those around you that God has put in your path.