I have just come back from a California Baptist University graduation (one of my grandsons) and saw and heard things that went right along with last week's sermon mention of education. CBU is an unabashadly Christian-oriented institution, seeking to educate people who will live out the Great Commission. Seeing the variety of academic disciplines represented in their graduating class, and hearing about their goals and activities, I was reminded of my own college experience, also in a Baptist-related liberal arts college in Oregon, Linfield College. I was fortunate to have been at a place were the faculty and goals were Christian, as well as intellectually rigorous and challenging. I came away with a good solid background in the "hard sciences" and mathematics, literature, history and political science, and Bible, and experience in theater. Todays' commencement speaker is a retired college president and Marine veteran with a lifetime of Christian service. One of his wrapup pieces of advice was something that I had figured out in college myself: learn as much as you can when when you can, about as many things as you can, so that you will be prepared for the opportunties that God sends you. He wants us to learn as much as we ca about His Creation; and we need to have an awareness that everything we learn on this earth relates to God either as a reflection of Him or a challenge to His power and authority.
In the words of the old chorus, He has the whole world in His hands. Everything in it is His: we are responsible to Him for what we do with what He has given us: a world in which we can work for what we need to live and grow. We ourselves are also in His Hands; we do get taken care of in amazing ways, but we also are allowed to suffer in ways that we may not understand in this life. I have learned in my own case, that He does allow things we don't like to happen to good people, but He is always there with us if we ask. 
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