Graduation is a great event. After you complete your formal education and receive diplomas, it is well to remember that in our spiritual lives we never graduate from God’s school while we are in the world. The youngest and oldest saints are in that school. Here we are learning God and His grace on the one hand, and what poor things we are on the other. Here our capacities for the knowledge and enjoyment of Him in that scene of bliss are being formed.
Lessons More Advanced
You will find that in God’s school it is often the same, in one respect, as in the school you have just left, in that as we go on, the lessons become more advanced. How else would our experience grow? But we have a faithful, wise and loving Teacher. He leads us on from lesson to lesson with the perfect skill of One who knows the end from the beginning. He knows exactly how to bring us into more conformity to Himself, yet He does it in that perfect, divine love to us as His children. And He is too faithful to us to allow us to pass on without learning our lessons. Students in the world’s schools are sometimes passed along without having mastered their lessons, but our Father will take us back time and again over the same lesson if necessary.
Work Is Good
It is good to have the responsibility of earning a living, and it is well that it is so. Work has been a wonderful blessing to fallen man; without it, he is all the more the plaything of the devil. When man fell, God’s sentence was, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:1919In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (Genesis 3:19)). But men have been seeking to circumvent this divine decree; they seek to eliminate toil and labor and to live by wit and scheme. Idleness, however, is not good; it has led to many falls. Many scriptures teach us the importance of honest labor. Just a few of the many are: “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” “Let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” “We ... exhort ... that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.”
Choosing an Occupation
If you face the problem of choosing an occupation or, perhaps, training for some profession, do seek guidance and wisdom from above. The choice you make will probably determine much of the character of your future life. May your one desire be to be found in the path of the Lord’s will for you, and then to seek His help and grace to glorify Him in it.
Do not set your heart on being great in this world, for this is indeed a snare to the children of God. The One whom we follow was not great here — He was rejected. Pride is in all hearts, and it easily leads us to aspire to prominence here. Remember that Satan is the god and prince of this world, and the higher we get in it, the closer we are to him who is its ruler. If you should be thrust into an important position, you will need more grace to walk with God in it.
Beware, too, of the snare of seeking to be rich. It is the love of money that is a root of every evil. People who love money will do what their own consciences condemn. We do not say that God may not give more material goods to some, but “if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” Those who are rich are warned not to trust in the uncertainty of riches (and how uncertain they are!) but in the living God, and they are exhorted to be rich in good works and ready to distribute to those who have need.
May your desire be to be found to the glory of Christ at all times and to be ever alert to that which would take you out of the path of obedience and of the fear of God.
P. Wilson