A message to the graduating seniors

Please indulge me for a moment as I share a graduation message with the members of our Sunday school class who will be graduating this week from high school. You will hear lots of advice from many speakers at various ceremonies over the next few days. I have no ceremony at which to speak, and no invitation, but I offer the following from one who has trod the path you are on for what it is worth.

As you enter the brave new world of adulthood, you will have to make your own choices more than ever before. In particular, you will have to decide whether you will progress in the gospel, and if so, how far. What you do with the knowledge that parents and teachers have tried to instill in you is up to you.

You have to decide every day whether to pray, read the scriptures, remember Christ, listen to the Holy Ghost, keep the commandments. You have to decide every week whether you will prepare for Sunday and be ready to participate and invite the Holy Ghost to teach you, or whether you will just let Sunday "happen" to you. You have to decide whether you are an agent or an object. If you choose to be a spiritual object, you will stagnate, wither, and die. If you choose to be an agent, you will grow and flourish and thrive. You will still make mistakes, but you will learn from them and make corrections and keep going.

You are at the most momentous moment in your life. Deciding to be baptized was significant, but it was probably pretty automatic for most of you. Nevertheless, you made a good choice. Deciding whom you will marry will be all about emotions and romance. Nevertheless, you will hopefully make another good choice. Today, however, you have the maturity you lacked as an eight-year-old and the clarity of thought that you may lack when you are in love to make a real decision about your eternal future.

What you do today, in the next weeks, in the next months, and in the next couple of years is crucial to your path in this life and toward eternal life. It has nothing to do with where you go to college or what job you get or what kind of career you pursue. It has everything to do with whether you get on the path of discipleship and stay on it. If you choose to get on, or stay on, the path now, and take the gospel seriously, and look to the Savior in every thought, and seek his will with all your heart while you are young, you have a glorious future ahead of you in earth life and beyond.

There will always be time to repent, but there is no moment like now to make the right decision and choose the right course.

May the Lord bless you today, this week, and always.

Sincerely,

Brother and Sister Armstrong