The Graduate

This time of year, you see a lot of balloons on mailboxes and extra cars in driveways.  Graduation parties.  Back in my day, when you graduated from high school you got a diploma and your old man let you get an extra quarter pounder at McDonalds.  "Can we get a 20 piece McNuggets?"  "Let's not go crazy son."

Now I was renting a band and catering food for my oldest daughter's accomplishment of surviving high school.  I don't mind.  I had the same look on my face that the other dad's had at the three other parties I went to last weekend.  My baby girl is growing up.  The celebration was less a reward for passing four years of academics, and more of a gesture of gratitude and encouragement.  Gratitude for the joy of raising her and encouragement for her to leave the nest.

I wonder sometimes if God looks on me with that same fatherly love.  The joy that comes from sharing a life with me, and encouragement for me to some day leave this world and move on to the next.  We might not all get diplomas, but we are all in His classroom, learning our lessons and experiencing our own graduations.

So go buy some balloons.  Put out a party tray of food, fill up the coolers and invite family and friends over to celebrate!

Proverbs 22:6  "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it."