Time IS Fleeting!

This year -- 2011 -- marks FIFTY years since your grandfather and I graduated from high school. He was in a class of several hundered at Vestal Central High School in Vestal, New York. And I was one of forty-five who graduated from Aroostook Central Institute (now Central Aroostook High School) in Mars Hill, Maine. Here you see 26 from my class as we celebrated the 1/2 century at a meal in the "new" high school cafeteria. Now, that is a feature that was unfamiliar to us back in 1961. We all carried our own bag lunches to school, though we could buy chips and soda to go with our sandwiches if we wished. I suppose your grandfather's class celebrated, too, but the news did not get through to him. He has never been to one of his class reunions and this was a first for me. I'm glad I went.

And here we were just over two years later on August 27, 1963. The guy from Vestal High and the girl from ACI who had never even heard of each other on that big day in 1961 had -- by the grace of God -- met and recognized that God's hand was in that meeting.

Here was the man of my dreams -- a Christian young man with high moral values. The perfect one to be a husband to me and father to the children that God would (we hoped) send us!

To our grandchildren: When the time comes to make your decision on who to marry, please remember this advice that was given to me -- when I was a teenager -- by someone very wise. I took that to heart, lived by it, and now almost 48 years later it has proven to be true over and over again. The advice to me, I'll pass along now: "Remember that whenever you date someone, it should be a candidate for marriage. So date only believers. You have no control over falling in love. You can fall in love with anyone. But you DO have control over who you date. You WILL marry someone that you date."

And let me add a little P.S. to that. When you fall in love, don't just make a lifetime decision with your HEART. Use your HEAD, too. Remember, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9) It's a hard one to realize and think about the fact that your own heart can lie to you! It is SO important that you keep in touch with God FIRST. Commit your will to HIM. And go only where you KNOW He is leading. He will never lead you in a direction that is contradictory to the Bible. So be reading the Bible, praying, and in an intimate relationship with your Creator. That will help you to make good decisions that will be a blessing all of your life.