So, here’s the question.
Now that graduation is over, ask yourselves, how do we keep walking with God?
It’s easy when things are good, and certainly, today, there is reason to celebrate!
But how do we keep walking with God when there is no way to make sense of the senseless?
How do we keep walking with God when we are carrying pain, anxiety, or grief?
How do we keep walking with God, when every day we see the evil of violence that tears apart families, schools, communities and nations?
We can do it by walking in the footsteps of the Apostles. They walked with God for three years. During that time, they saw what Jesus did, heard his words, witnessed his prayer life and understood his powerful call to peace. He gave people hope.
And then he was gone, a victim of fear, hatred and violence.
Our challenge is the same challenge the Apostles faced after Jesus was crucified.
The need to carry on.
This is the same challenge individuals and communities have faced whenever some form of violence robbed them of the ones they love and deprived them of the safety and security everyone should have when they think about home.
The Apostles carried on, strengthened by their faith in God, the power of the Holy Spirit and each other, friends who believed in the same things and had the same mission.
Together, they changed the world.
They had heard the words of their Lord when he spoke to the great crowds who had gathered for the Sermon on the Mount – kind of like the crowds who gather for outdoor concerts today except the only music was the voice of Jesus.
It was then that they heard Jesus say, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
Peacemakers.
Now that’s a real challenge – especially when we are hurt and filled with anger. But that is when we are called to be that one person, changing one heart at a time if that’s all we can do.
It’s in the heart that peace has its beginning. That’s why we need the Grace of God, his help to make what seems impossible possible. That’s why we need prayer.
The Apostle Paul saw the effects of the peaceful, prayerful heart of Christ, the man who loved the world into goodness through his death.
Paul later wrote to the community of the Romans and told them what he had learned from Jesus. “Do not be overcome by evil, but rather overcome evil with good.”
To respond to evil with evil, to become people of rage, would be to become less than God calls us to be. We cannot change the evil that rips thousands of lives apart through war, terrorist attacks or violence of any kind.
But if we answer Jesus’ call to be people of peace, youth committed to a peaceful world, we can continue to walk with God in faith and hope and love.
Martin Luther King once said that “peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.’
Martin Luther King was a wise man. If we are not at peace with each other in our homes, in our schools and in our workplaces, we cannot be at peace in our communities, in our nation or with other countries.
So what should we do now?
Make peace – one prayer and one person at a time. Continue walking with God and take friends with you.