The next step

This week at Garin College in Nelson, all over New Zealand, and - I assume - all over the Southern Hemisphere, 17, 18 and 19 year old students are leaving school to take another step in their lives.

Nearly all of those students are more than ready to throw off the uniforms, the monitoring and checking, the routines and the hierarchies of school life and try themselves out in the adult world.

So far, most are not fully aware of the size of the step they are taking.

At school older adults take care and responsibility for the growth, learning and safety of their pupils. The staff want them to do well academically - and want them to develop in positive ways as people.

But over the next week our young adults enter a world where (when they leave home) no-one they see on a day-to-day basis really will care about their life as a whole or about their personal development. They move from environments where they are genuinely loved and cherished and supported - to much more impersonal places where, at best, people are paid to watch out for them for eight hours a day, for a term or a year.

At school older adults take responsibility for the safety of their students. The adults - parents and teachers - explain how things might go wrong and try to prepare them for the step they take this week.

Adults put themselves out to provide rich and stimulating experiences. Parents support them financially with free food and accommodation, and with other necessities and luxuries.

When our students were children many of the adults around our young people did their best to make them aware of the spiritual world around them. In most families and schools that support has become a rationalisation that we each must make our own way spiritually. In most families all they can do is set an example - or just pray for their children. Some families give in to the indifference of the world and are no longer involved in spiritual formation - of the adults or children.

At school and inside families, the consequences for mistakes are mostly personal and loving (even when the consequences involve short-term pain!) Next week - and definitely next year - mistakes will have adult consequences. A growling, a detention or suspension, or a "talk" - will be replaced with impersonal failure, debt, fines, prison, or lifelong commitments.

In our families and schools the adults protect young people from the worst consequences, but in the adult world that protection quickly fades and sometimes even becomes illegal. Everyone must face their own consequences.

Even the language changes. Borrow becomes steal. Tease becomes harass. Push becomes assault. Consequence becomes punishment. Experiment becomes illegal. Risk-taking may become death.

Parents and teachers have done all we can to prepare our young people for the world they step into so lightly. There will be grief for all of them - as there was for us. Most will adjust quickly and thrive. Some will continue to need our support.

Most young people stepping out this week are spiritually aware, even if most are not particularly religious. Tell them you are praying for them. Tell them you are still there for them. They will mostly be too proud to ask, but knowing you are still their backstop is an important security.

We ask God to continue to bless them, to protect them, and guide them in their lives, and as they become the people God (along with parents and teachers) created them to be.