Remembering What Matters
Terry J. Hallock
Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
Graduates Sunday, May 21, 2000
Those are fairly blunt words from King Solomon, son of the great King David and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men who ever lived. His plea, given near the end of his journey through this life, can be summed up in three words: Remember what matters. "Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!" he cried. Solomon was blest with great wealth and power yet as the end of his life approached it all seemed like sand that flowed through his hands. Remember what matters! He had achieved universal fame yet it meant nothing compared to what matters!
My young brothers and sisters -- and my more mature family of God -- don't let Solomon's plea fall on deaf ears for we too need to remember what matters. Graduates, you now stand in the strength of youth and it is a wonderful time. New horizons and opportunities lay before you as far as your eyes can see. Celebrate them, seize them and enjoy them.
But as you do understand that these moments will not remain frozen in time. They will come and they will go. In fact you will discover that as your life moves from youth to maturity time will, in Albert Einstein's words, become very relative. Summers which in your childhood seemed to last forever now seem far shorter and the day will arrive when the Summers of your life will pass by so quickly it will seem they had not even begun before they ended. Life's horizons are now so vast and wide you cannot glimpse their end but the day will arrive when the bright morning of today will have become tomorrow's sunset. As our own daughters move from one stage of their lives to another, their mother and I find it nearly impossible to comprehend that the little girls in starched white dresses frozen in family photographs are today maturing young women. Eighteen and twenty-two years have passed in only a moment. That is how it is for us now as we stand in the last half of our ...
Terry J. Hallock
Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
Graduates Sunday, May 21, 2000
Those are fairly blunt words from King Solomon, son of the great King David and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men who ever lived. His plea, given near the end of his journey through this life, can be summed up in three words: Remember what matters. "Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!" he cried. Solomon was blest with great wealth and power yet as the end of his life approached it all seemed like sand that flowed through his hands. Remember what matters! He had achieved universal fame yet it meant nothing compared to what matters!
My young brothers and sisters -- and my more mature family of God -- don't let Solomon's plea fall on deaf ears for we too need to remember what matters. Graduates, you now stand in the strength of youth and it is a wonderful time. New horizons and opportunities lay before you as far as your eyes can see. Celebrate them, seize them and enjoy them.
But as you do understand that these moments will not remain frozen in time. They will come and they will go. In fact you will discover that as your life moves from youth to maturity time will, in Albert Einstein's words, become very relative. Summers which in your childhood seemed to last forever now seem far shorter and the day will arrive when the Summers of your life will pass by so quickly it will seem they had not even begun before they ended. Life's horizons are now so vast and wide you cannot glimpse their end but the day will arrive when the bright morning of today will have become tomorrow's sunset. As our own daughters move from one stage of their lives to another, their mother and I find it nearly impossible to comprehend that the little girls in starched white dresses frozen in family photographs are today maturing young women. Eighteen and twenty-two years have passed in only a moment. That is how it is for us now as we stand in the last half of our ...
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