We mark our lives by milestones. Some are once in a lifetime: our first words, our first day of school, our first love. Others cycle in and out: the changing of the seasons, the turning of the liturgical year.
Each May at Luther Seminary, there’s a milestone that touches both. Faculty and staff watch commencement happen spring after spring, as another academic year comes to a close—while for our graduating students it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience that propels them through the portal of all that lies beyond seminary. It’s a moment of celebration that is somehow bittersweet, full of goodbyes and new beginnings.
This year, we couldn’t be prouder of the students graduating from Luther Seminary. We are sending over a hundred graduates into the world to be pastors, leaders, youth directors, chaplains, organizers, theologians, and scholars. Their vocations are varied, but we trust in God’s faithful provision to lead them—and the church entrusted to them—in the direction God is calling.
Please join me in celebration and prayer for our graduates, called and sent by the Holy Spirit to witness to salvation through Jesus Christ and to serve in God’s world. We offer this prayer, which comes at the end of morning prayer in the Lutheran Book of Worship (and which I always amend by adding joys), for our students in the coming weeks.
Lord God, you have called your servants
To ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
By paths as yet untrodden, through perils (and into joys) unknown.
Give us faith to go out with courage,
Not knowing where we go,
But only that your hand is leading us
And your love supporting us;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.