Commencement Address – What Were They Thinking?

Our local private school’s senior class requested that I be their graduation speaker. What were they thinking? They had to sit through two “sermons” since their baccalaureate was the night before with a full-fledge sermon. I knew that the chances of their remembering anything I said were slim to none. Since I don’t enjoy the prospect of fading into commencement oblivion so quickly, I decided to cheat a little bit.

I told the class that they probably wouldn’t remember much of what I said, so I made each of them a “cheat sheet” for life. Have you ever tried to reduce life’s most important lessons to five or six ideas? It’s hard. I laminated 4 x 6 cards and told the graduates to hang onto them as one day, they may understand their importance. At the very least, they got a “cool” bookmark with a redwood seed containing the actual genetic code to grow the tallest living thing on the planet.

I’ve blogged about the “seed” idea being used to simply remind people as they feel the tiny little bump under the plastic, that if God is smart enough to cram all the information needed to grow the tallest living thing on the planet, He’s smart enough to be trusted with our lives. So, what lessons would you include on your cheat sheet? Here are the ones I came up with…click on each for a larger view. If you want to make your own, you can order the seeds from: http://seedrack.com/09.html

Scroll down to "Coastal Redwood." They are $3.29 per 50 seed packet.