Just another Scholarship Sunday?

One would think that after doing what we call "Scholarship Sunday" for the third time in our life it would become more routine. Well it has not and in fact we find that being on the giving end of these few short moments that it is indeed more blessed to be giving than to receiving.  Maybe it is the joy of listening to young people who are focused and ready to move on in life or maybe as it was like yesterday when a sermon that hit home with us during the worship hour, but either way these scholarships my wife and I endowed now some three years ago are making us a better Christian. 

The whole idea behind these scholarships was to honor our parents for passing on their Christian based life to us for those many years and setting an example of how to live such a life.  The Bonner H. Jones and Wilma D. Jones "Leadership" Scholarship was exactly that to find young Christian leaders and honor them for their hard work and more so their willingness to begin a walk with God early in their lives.  Ragan Deal the youth minister at First Baptist Church Richlands preached on that very point yesterday in his sermon when he talked about having a "Walk Worthy" of God during your life. His point was brought home to us by some comments made by Pastor Gary McAbee at the church some time ago during a presentation by the youth one evening.  The point was that in today's secular driven world a young person attempting to be a Christian and live Christian values has it much tougher than they did when we were growing up.  We fully believe that to be true and surely most people can agree on that point too. 

So on this third Scholarship Sunday we get to meet several young people graduating from various schools and discussing their futures.  We get to listen to parents who consider Christian values an important bedrock of their children's lives going forward.  We had the blessing of one of our oldest friends Rita mention to us that the young lady who was honored with the scholarship this year was a good choice.  We get to experience the unique joy of coming home to a congregation where we found Christ and have the fellowship of kindred minds. All while still doing the one thing we wanted to do all along and that is honor our parents for their Christian service.

This brings us to a point my wife makes regularly that doing something for someone who has no chance or opportunity to pay you back in any way is most blessed for the giver and certainly one of the highest Christian values.  Somewhere along the way we will get old enough that making these pilgrimages to our home church the second Sunday in June to present the award will not be possible for either health reasons or just having passed on.  Hopefully that will be well past ten or maybe 15 such Sundays and this scholarship will be fully embedded in the culture of the institution.  The endowment will live on as planned and 100 Sundays from now some Christian young person having just graduated from Richlands High School will be blessed with the scholarship and my parents honored by something named after them and their Christian walk worthy of God.