relationships and community on Graduation

Remember how you felt that Christmas when your sister opened the gift you wanted? Or when your brother got a T-bird for graduation and you got stuck with the family Nova? Fast-forward to today and ask...

God of grace, love, and hope: Your grace comes when we least expect and don’t deserve it. Your love comes when we can’t comprehend why but we need it the most. Your hope comes at just the right time t...

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

God of the common and of the uncommon. You meet us in the ordinary routines of life–when we play and when we rest, while we work and while we worship. And You reveal yourself in the extraordinary, too...

Consider offering this blessing during worship the second Sunday in August. This is often the last Sunday college students are in worship before they return to school. This prayer could also be used d...

I’ll never forget sitting in the guidance counselor’s office my freshman year in high school in the Lehigh Valley area between Philadelphia and Allentown, where I grew up. The purpose of our meeting w...

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

In a time where leader after leader's calls end in disgrace, it is helpful to remember that finishing, not starting, is what is most important. The following story illustrates this well: Two ship...

Success is handing the baton to those who come behind us and cheering them on as they run farther and faster than we did.

Welcoming One, we welcome you and we welcome another school year. Thank you for the blessings of learning and growing, thinking and creating, reasoning and discovering. Fulfill these blessings in ever...

Leader: Jesus, we praise you, and thank you for the gift of education and for the opportunity to start fresh with a new school year!  We ask for your protection over students of all ages, from the ...

I have been moved to a different course of action, however, inspired largely by my daily exposure to college students in a great university during the course of a preaching and teaching ministry that ...

Eternal God, Maker of all that is seen and unseen, thank you for the great gifts of learning, growing, and discovering. Thank you for all who are standing here today, and for the millions more who’ve ...

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Marriage starts as a joy and ends up an education.

A young man won admission to college. Instead of writing a letter of congratulations, his father penned this note: Now it is a good thing to put this business very plainly before you. Do not think I...

To say goodbye is to die a little.

There is a peculiar gratification in receiving congratulations from one’s squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world.

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

The final word is love.

Father: today we celebrate your gift. At creation you gave us the gift of life; through the life, death and resurrection of your Son, Jesus, you gave us new life; at his ascension, we gained a mediato...

Growth in grace is growth downward. It is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves. It is a deepening realization of our nothingness. It is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the le...

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity.

When schools flourish, all flourishes.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind in others the conviction and will to carry on.

One generation and another generation; the generation by which we are made the faithful, and are born again by baptism; the generation by which we shall rise again from the dead, and shall live with t...

In the day that we stand before our Master and Maker, it will not matter how many people on earth knew our name, how many called us great, and how many considered us fools. It will not matter whether ...

A gardener’s education begins with the realization that we are never exempt from the needs and requirements of care. It is formed through sustained attention to and responsibility for the places that ...

The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...