Graduating Seniors Bullard

Introduction

Isaiah 64:7–8 NIV

No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins. Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

John 16:33 NIV

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Pray.

I was thinking this week about the questions that pervaded my senior year in high school. It was not that long ago, but it has also been a minute. I remember the questions going into senior year:

How easy can I make my class schedule? Like how early can I leave school?

What am I going to wear to prom?

Where am I going to school? Am I going to school?

When are applications due?

Which brings you to the questions that everyone asks you when it comes to this time.... What is next?!

But this year was full of questions we did not expect to deal with:

Where is my mask?!?!

Is today on zoom?

What will prom look like? Graduation look like? Football games? Sports? All of the things....

I know this is a depressing place to start but I just want to ask you to think about things you have lost in the last year. Or maybe people you have lost.

Class of 2021, the truth is....things this year were hard. They did not go how it was supposed to go. And I hate that for the last year of your childhood, you had to deal with some of these things.

Hate that in many ways you had to grow up a little too fast.

Because here is part of growing up....wrestling with this question:

What do I do when life does not go as scripted?

This has more to do with life in general than any of us, so I think this will apply to all that are in the room.

So what do we do when life does not go as scripted?

Well to answer that we first need to ask what is forming our script?

what are the narratives that we are believing? The story that we want to tell ourselves is that life is just going to keep getting better and better.

Researcher Duke Marshall: Calls this an ascending narrative.

Picture of graph

Picture of Lebron

How many championships.....

“Not 1....

When I graduated high school, I believed this narrative.

This is ascending narrative. Deep down, We know life is not this way.

Sometimes people live a descending narrative:

it was better when....

Glory days when so and so was president

Everything was great until I lost my job, or until cancer, or until....

But deep down we know things dont always go this way too.

Duke Marshall’s research found was that people were most resilient and able to persevere more is when they embrace the reality that life is not always up and not always down.

He calls it oscillating narratives.

(The only time I have used oscillating was to these fans)

This is facing the reality that things will be good and bad. Things will experience flourishing, but there will also be loss and disappointment. Example:

Oscillating narrative:

John 16:33 NIV

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Because when clear on this reality, you might begin to choose who you will be in the midst of the oscillation.

I chose the Isaiah’s text because it is full of this oscillation but there is something extremely poignant right in the middle of it.

The first 7 verses are all about the destruction that the people of God have faced and are facing because the people of God have strayed from God. But then there is this turn in verse 7 with one word. Yet....

Isaiah 64:8 NIV

Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

The author here in the midst of the descending hardship....in the midst of, dang things should have been different, he turns as says

“yet you, Lord.... you are the potter.”

Now some of you may have taken art class out of love, some of you might have taken it as a hopeful easily elective.

but if you have ever made pottery from clay you can appreciate this imagery:

show picture

“Throwing Clay”

this is a rough and labor intensive process. The pressure here on the clay creates a work of art.

Listen, I do not believe God allowed a pandemic to happen to teach you a lesson or to get you to go to a certain college, but I wonder if in the trial God has chosen to create something in you that wouldn’t be there otherwise?

So the question is will you in the future have clear eyes enough to see God’s hand at work in the middle of it all?

Those that believe that they are the work of God’s hand and that God is present in the middle of life, I believe hold some realities in the midst of good and bad:

Security: Trusting that God’s presence is right in the middle of it all

For those in Christ, there is an assurance, a peace that is tied directly to his presence. In the upper room, we see this the best. Jesus shows up and says multiple times....peace. Describe the scene.

2. Identity: Who we are is not determined by external circumstances

This is not about what we do. That’s why I kind of cringe when I find myself asking a graduate....what is next? What are you going to do next? That is perpetuating the problem. What is next for you? Well what is next is to continue to learn, discern, and fortify who you are in Christ. That takes place in whatever is next.

3. Purpose: We are to be a work of God’s hand in the world

To be a work of art. To be a reflection of God.

Closing, young adult this week. He went to Emory, a great school in Atlanta. Graduated with honors and then worked in Yellowstone, then got into law school and graduated and then quickly got a job with a Texas congressman in Washington DC.

When I met with him he shared about everything going on in his life.

But at the end I could here a serious depletion in:

security

identity

purpose

Friends, this is an exciting time of your life. Parents this is an exciting time in your life. There will be new and exciting things ahead. There will also be seasons that are not how you scripted it. There will be lack of job security, there will be political strife, there will be sickness or illness, there will be pandemic like experiences

and yet, God is our Father, We are the clay and He is the potter, we are all the work of his hand.