New Church Life July/August 2015 | Page 65

      -     of this mission will become more relevant to you as you progress through your life’s journey. Life is filled with a series of major milestones such as the day you got accepted into college, the day you graduated from college, the day you started your first job after college. These events will mark significant changes in your life. And you will continue to experience an onslaught of life changes as you experience your first raise, your first promotion and hopefully many more to follow. However, you like everyone else, will also experience failure or setbacks which will discourage you at times. Experiences of success and failure are really part of life’s lessons which will make you a better, stronger person. Given that today is your graduation day, I would like to talk about how the success of achieving a college education is cause for a day of celebration. I also want to speak to you about other types of days that will follow a day of celebration that are so important to future success and development. Let me start by saying congratulations to all of the graduates! It is a day of celebration! You made it! This is a day you have longed for, your parents have longed for, and other friends and family have longed for. Today is filled with so many words to describe how you must feel, such as joy, happiness, elation and perhaps a little sadness as you say goodbye to classmates, friends, teachers, coaches. All these people have been part of making your time at BAC a wonderful experience. Celebration today is the opportunity for both you and your classmates to honor your achievement and pass another important milestone in your life. Celebration is very important. You are all achievers; you have met your goal of obtaining a college education. An important lesson today is to learn that acknowledging achievement and celebrating is a good thing. You will find that setting time aside for life’s celebrations is useful and a form of love between you and those who have helped you to obtain a college education. Celebration also allows one to demonstrate enthusiasm for an accomplishment. Too often many people think celebration is unnecessary or a self-centered attention on one’s achievement. Celebration that is conducted with grace, thankfulness and sincere love is worth sharing with others who can You will be able to perform sound decision-making with the help of your education while embracing the sound moral compass that has been introduced to you through your Bryn Athyn College education. 377