It’s graduation season, albeit a vastly different mood and medium this year, due to Coronavirus requiring the cessation of in-person education and celebrations.

Recently, I had contemplated, knowing what I know now, what would I want to communicate to my previous self at each of my graduations:

– 1988 – High School
– 1992 – Undergraduate
– 1996 – Graduate School

Psalm 111:10 states,

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!”

So I believe I would want to ensure that, amidst the growth in knowledge, I could celebrate having grown in the fear of the Lord during each of those 4-year spans.

The following quote by puritan Richard Baxter resonates with the verse above regarding the pre-eminence of heavenly wisdom. If I ever have the opportunity to speak at a baccalaureate service or graduation ceremony, I am certain I would challenge the graduates with these truths. 

“Knowledge is to be valued according to its usefulness. If it be a matter of as great concernment to know how to do your worldly business, and to trade and gather worldly wealth, and to understand the laws, and to maintain your honor, as it is to know how to be reconciled unto God, to be pardoned and justified, to please your Creator, to prepare in time for death and judgment, and an endless life, then let worldly wisdom have the pre-eminence.

But if all earthly things be dreams and shadows, and valuable only as they serve us in the way to heaven, then surely the heavenly wisdom is the best. Alas, how far is that man from being wise, that is acquainted with all the punctilios of the law, that is excellent in the knowledge of all the languages, sciences, and arts, and yet knoweth not how to live to God, to mortify the flesh, to conquer sin, to deny himself, nor to answer in judgment for his fleshly life, nor to escape damnation! As far is such a learned man from being wise, as he is from being happy.