Three speakers, best they could, avoided cliches during baccalaureate services for Iola High’s seniors at First Christian Church Wednesday evening.
The Rev. Dave McGullion, speaking in his church, told the seniors graduation was “the end of one chapter and beginning of another.”
“Life is full of surprises,” noted the Rev. Ted Stahl, deacon at St. John’s Catholic Church.
“There will be a lot of movement in your life, a lot of motion,” said the Rev. Jeff Cokely of Fellowship Regional Church.
High school graduation gives the young opportunities to be “your very own person — finally,” McGullion said. “You can hang out with who you want. Stay out all night, live life to the fullest.”
But, he added, many who gain fame and wealth end up discouraged, noting so many rich and famous die young. He mentioned Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Junior Seau and others whose lives and deaths were splashed on front pages worldwide.
“Jesus wants you to live abundantly and he wants you to be involved with him.” That life, McGullion said, is satisfying and complete.
Stahl said high school graduation wasn’t a beginning or an ending, rather an important milestone in the life of each senior.
“The past is gone and the future is all ahead of you,” he said, referring to Matthew 16:26, which, in part, says: What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
“There is nothing wrong in obtaining riches,” Stahl said, but how they are acquired and a person’s priorities can be another story.
He referred to Gale Sayers’ autobiography, “I am Third.”
Sayers, a football star at Kansas and for the Chicago Bears, said in his life God was first, friends and family were second and “I am third.”
The future won’t always “work out exactly as you plan,” Cokely told 35 of 88 seniors attending the baccalaureate service. “There will be a lot of transformation in your lives.”
He quoted 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.”
“God has a plan for your life,” Cokely said.
By today’s standards, he said Jesus was a failure. He was poor, never attended college, never wrote a book, never traveled more than 200 miles from where he was born and died on a cross between two thieves.
