Dear Jessica
and Jonathan,
Nineteen
years ago, Dad got up on a Sunday morning and announced to the church that we
had a “visitor” who was coming to stay with us for eighteen years, due to
arrive that fall. We later learned that
our “visitor” was bringing a friend to join us for that eighteen year
sojourn. And now your rooms are
overflowing with suitcases, mountains of
clothes, electronics, and last-minute
projects. Amazingly, much faster than
any of us anticipated, your odyssey here is closing as you embark on a new
adventure.
My mind
races back to those early days of homeschool.
Printed alphabet letters on the wall, fat crayons, and numbers charts
marked the beginning of that long era.
And every day, we started out with a Bible verse. Do you remember it? “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, DO IT
with thy might!” You would pound your
little fists on the table for emphasis, as though noise could factor in and
increase your determination to master cursive writing and those infamous flash
cards that almost brought all three of us to tears.
And that is
the sermon I hand back to you, and entire education later: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do DO IT with
thy might!”
You already
know that this world is teeming with smart, athletic, beautiful, and
charismatic people. They finish seasons
with trophies, and they garner publicity and praise just for being attractive
or funny. But you may be surprised to
learn that the future does not automatically grant its custody to the gifted. The future belongs to the determined, to those
willing to invest resourcefully with whatever small gift they brought into this
world, and to keep going. And
going. And going. The future belongs to the ones willing to get
back up on Monday morning.
If I could
give you one tool that would embolden you to stand back up when the world wants
to flatten you; to talk yourself into finishing when the entire universe tells
you to quit; to defy the circumstantial evidence that would invite you to
despair, and to rise again into victory, it would be this: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.
Do you hear
the little fists pounding the table? With all thine heart. With all thy might. Of all the missions you will face in this
next adventure, the most important is this one thing: Trust
in the Lord. If you pour your zeal,
and every last ounce of determination into trusting the Lord, you will find the
strength in Him to run your race “with all thy might.” It
starts with trusting the Lord.
Trust Him
when you are on top of your game, when you have the world by the tail. Some of life’s most unexpected turns lurk in
those sunny days when we think nothing could touch us. “Lean not on thine own understanding.”
Trust Him
when things go wrong. Trust Him when all
your plans seem to dissolve, and when you don’t know what to do next.
Trust Him
when you feel the security and ease of having plenty. Trust God enough to give back to Him rather
than hoarding the resources He has blessed you with.
Trust Him
when money is scarce, when you don’t know how you will pay bills. God “pleadeth the cause of the poor.” You can trust Him to supply your needs. Your greatest victories in life will often start with a story of
“need.”
Trust Him when you are injured. Trust Him to give you charity for those who hurt you—by their words, by their silence, by their actions. Trust Him to teach you how to love your enemies, how to pray for your abusers. Remember what they said about Jesus when He hung on the cross? “He trusted God.” Let your enemies suspect the same of you.
Trust Him
when you need wisdom. Jesus is not just
a supporting actor in your play. He
wrote the play. Follow His script. Let Him tell you what to do next.
Trust Him to
enable you to do right. Every failure of
character we experience is the result of self-dependence. Faith is your shield.
Wherever God’s
will takes you in this next great adventure of life, trust Him with all your
heart, with all your might.
“He it is
that doth go with thee. He will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee.”
We love you
and count it an honor to be your parents!
