This is graduation time and, for me, retirement time

This is graduation time, for me it is retirement time. It is a time that I am retiring. A time when I feel myself feeling sad and joy at the same time. For I know not what the future holds for me, nor do I know what it holds for you. But I know who holds the future and for that I am thankful.

And thus, as I write this article for you, my prayer is that I also will hear what I want you to hear. What I am going to say I know I also need to take to heart.

At graduation time, at retirement time, I can best identify with the trapeze artist who knows he must let go of the trapeze bar he is holding onto if he is going to take hold of the one coming his way.

So like the trapeze artist I too am discovering that I must let go of that to which I have been tied, if I am going to continue to graduate through life.

To leave my friends, though, is to die a little, but to stay is also to die. So, it is that life calls me to leave behind that which I have acquired and acquire that which I have not possessed.

And so it is as I graduate through life, as I retire, as I move from serving a church to not serving a church, I am discovering that there is a time for everything under heaven. A time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Let me say it this way. As I find myself retiring, graduating through life, I am being called to let go of that which is familiar, in order that I might experience life in a fuller way, as I find everything changing around me.

One person put it like this:

?You know what is great about retiring, graduating through life? I know that my life doesn?t have to be the same it has always been. I don?t have to be the person I have always been. You know what is scary? I know that I can never be the same again, and will never be the same again.?