Baccalaureate

When I am sad I will cry but I will go on with my life.

When I am tired I will rest but I will go on with my life.

I give myself permission to heal…,

I give myself permission to hope and live so that I can reach the dreams God has given me.

And Finally: When I Look Back What Will I See?

This week the County Music Charts top artist are:

Sam Hunt “Body Like a Back Road”

Brett Young “In Case You Didn’t Know”

Luke Combs “Hurricane”

When I looked back on this week in the year I graduated high school the top artist were:

Ray Charles and Willie Nelson “Seven Spanish Angels”---go ahead and laugh….

George Strait “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind”

Conway Twitty “Ain’t She Something Else”

That is why I was more an AC/DC, Metallic and ZZTop guy in high school.

Recently on Family Feud…, Steve Harvey said, they surveyed 100 people

Name the most memorable milestone of your life.

Graduation was one of the top six answers on the board.

Not that you will remember who spoke at your high school graduation.

Gallup just did a poll that said, less than 8 percent

could remember who spoke at the college graduation.

Images of today will forever be etched into your memory.

You will forget other things that you thought were so important.

What will I see when I look back?

Popularity?

Social status?

All this will change by the time you have your five and ten year class reunions.

Geeks and Goths and those who were the clumsiest

Will rise to become successful entrepreneurs…, doctors…, lawyers…, Engineers.

I will never forget shortly after I graduated college going back to my home town.

As I pulled up to the drive through window at McDonalds there was Liddia

She was the most popular cheerleader in high school. 4.0 average.

Working the drive up window.

I learned this lesson: The most likely to succeed don’t always succeed.

And the least likely to make it sometimes make it.

It is not about what is handed to you in life.

It is about what you do with what you have in life that makes the difference.

I am going to leave you today with a challenge.

Last week Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking

said that humans need to colonize a new planet soon —

and now he's arguing that we need to start within 100 years or risk extinction.

With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population…

We need to find a new planet.

For some people here today either our parents or grandparents laughed

when Wright brothers flew the first plane at Kitty Hawk.

They made jokes when NASA started the project to send a manned space flight to the moon.

We marveled at the first TCP/IP and dreamed about the world wide web. (486x) DOS HTML)

So who knows.

Maybe those Syfy fans and Algebra/Physics Geeks

Will someday think outside the box and lead the race to colonize a new planet.

But in the mean time let me challenge you to take better care of the one we have now.

I’m not just talking about green energy, Eco watch or save the earth.

I mean more like whatever corner of earth you live in do your best to make it better.

I am convinced we are going to have to do a lot better job of taking care of what we have