Smart people can make some dumb predictions:

• In 1943, the chairman of IBM said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
• Decca Recording Company rejected a musical group in 1962 with the assertion, "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." The group was named the Beatles.
• Irving Fisher, Economics Professor at Yale University, said, "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." The year was 1929.
• Charles Duell, commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, said in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
• The head of IBM once said of a proposal, "I don't know what use anyone could find for a machine that would make copies of documents." The inventor was forced to found Xerox.
• The chairman of Digital Equipment Corporation said in 1977, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

Who of us can really see the future? Who of us thought two Sundays ago that the next day would bring the Virginia Tech tragedy? What will happen tomorrow where you live?

On a day when we honor and pray for our graduates, what kind of society are we sending them into? Is there an overarching purpose to this apparently random, chaotic world? If there is, how can they know it? How can you?

God promises his chosen people, "I know the plans I have for you--plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." But he sent the Babylonians to destroy their temple and take them captive. They're going to be enslaved in this foreign, pagan land for 70 years. How can this be? How can God have a plan to prosper and not harm them, and allow this?

How can God allow the tragedy at Virginia Tech to take the lives of 32 students and faculty just like our graduates and their parents? How can he allow you to face cancer and heart disease, divorce and death and grief? How does this promise work in a fallen world like theirs and ours? How can we find God's will and purpose in the midst of such struggles as we all face?