I Graduated!!!!

Yipee!! Graduation is over and I'm done with high school!!!!!!!! The ceremony was so great. My parents got to give me my diploma and they spent about four minutes just talking about how proud they were of me and how they really beleived that I would do well in college. It was so sweet, I almost cried. All the parents of the seniors got to do that, it was almost as sweet watching my friends and their parents as it was being on stage with mine.

I also got to give a valedictorian speech about posst-it notes!! I'm copying the speech below (unlike Sam, nothing exciting happened to me while i was giving it, but I think it went well anyways).

So now it's on to college!

My Speech: God's Will in a Post-It Note

Good afternoon everyone, I hope that you all are having a wonderful time at graduation. First I want to thank all of you for being here to support us as we graduate and many of you, parents, grandparents, teachers and others for helping us as we worked our way through school.

I want to start today by telling you all a story. Many years ago there was a man who was working in a laboratory to create a “super-adhesive”. He developed many chemical formulas for what he knew was going to be the strongest glue ever made. But each time he made his glue, it was annoyingly weak. The adhesive would release its hold on two pieces of paper at even the slightest pull. He tried again and again to make his glue stronger, but he failed every time. Then, he realized that his invention, though not a “super-adhesive” as he intended it, was actually a very useful product and to this day we all use post-it notes.

I love this story because it is such a good example of how God’s Will can sometimes work in our lives. When we start out (like graduating from high school) we can sometimes think that we have God’s plan all figured out. But along the way, things don’t work out. Our glue just won’t stick. It is in these situations that we can have one of two responses: we can get frustrated that the glue won’t work, or we can make a post-it note!

The prophet Daniel and his friends Hannaiah, Mishael, and Azariah (better known as Shardrack, Meshack and Abed-nego), had to deal with this very situation in their lives. These four young Hebrew men remained faithful to their God even in the idolatrous land of Babylon. For their dedication to Him, God gave them favor with the Bablyonian king and gave them positions of great influence in that nation. At that point they were probably thinking, “this is great, God is giving us these positions of influence so we can live here and bring God glory in this nation.” Though this was a major part of God’s plan for them, it was not all He had in store. After a few years, King Nebecadnezzer built a giant golden idol and commanded all the people to worship it. Of course, they would not do that, so they refused to bow down to it. This action got them a quick trip to a blazing furnace. Now though the Bible doesn’t say exactly what Shadrack, Meshack, and Abed-nego were thinking as they were being led to the furnace, I can imagine them wondering why God had given them all this authority in Bablyon only to let them die. God’s plan probably wasn’t working out very well in their heads. But they had the right response, they decided to trust in God and hold fast to His commandments. God did not let them die that day, but instead kept them safe in the middle of a fire so hot that it killed two men standing near it. This miracle showed the entire nation of Bablyon the power of God in a way that was unequalled by any other recorded act that these young ever men did.

Now I truly hope that none of you will be threatened to be thrown into a fiery furnace, but we are frequently thrust into situations where God’s plan is not clear to us. However, if we trust in him and remain open to the idea that God knows His plan better than we do, He will bring us through it and looking back we’ll be able to see how God’s actual plan brought Him much more glory than the plan we thought He had.


It is so important that we seek God’s will for our lives. But equally important is listening to what God is saying when situations don’t work out. Sometimes He wants us to push though and stick to the original idea, but other times He wants to us to realize that His Will was something totally different than what we originally thought it was. So don’t be afraid to make a change and invent a post-it note!

Thank you.