High School reunions – they come around every 5 years and they are often times that people wonder if they should attend or not. If things are going great in their life, they may want to come and share with their friends. If you are struggling in life, you are more apt to not come because you don’t want to talk about all your struggles and difficulties you have gone through. It seems that reunions are often more to brag about all you’ve done in life than to reconnect and establish deeper relationships.
This week I am celebrating my 45th high school reunion. It is hard to believe that it was 45 years ago that we graduated and began our adult journeys. For many of us we went our separate ways, found jobs, built new friendships and lost the connections we had from those high school days. We may have seen each other at a reunion, but our lives were on separate paths.
Now we are in our 60’s. We have all gone through our adult years. We all have experienced difficulties and challenges over the course of 45 years. Some have gone through job losses or career changes, marriage difficulties, family challenges, or health issues. We have identities that look different that we were or what we wanted, but it does not matter. Whether you are single, married, divorced the only identity that really matters is who you are in Jesus. The bond that we have from 45 years ago is the faith that was part of who we were back then and the common threads it gives us today.
Over the past several years, a group of guys from our class have been getting together to reconnect and do life together. We have had weekends up north, campfires and times at a brewery, and we have shared how God has been working in our lives and have re-established those bonds from long ago. We have found that what we do or did for work, how much money we have or the problems we have faced don’t define us, instead they have shaped us into the men that God wants us to be. We don’t have it all figured out, but we support one another and pray for one another.
This isn’t an exclusive group, just a group of guys who were willing to be vulnerable and spend time together. In that we found something special.
Now we are gathering 45 years later, and you wonder if you should attend. Your lives have changed, and you may be different than how you were all those years ago. But you are welcome! There is no judgement or evaluation of your success or failure, but rather a time to reconnect with old friends and build new relationships with some old people who you knew but never really built a relationship with. This is a time to celebrate the life that God has given us, but also to share about how we can continue to make a difference with our lives through our time and resources, because ultimately our lives are judged based on what we have done for Jesus and nothing else.
I hope to see as many of my classmates as possible at our reunion. Come and chat, reconnect, listen to some great music, have some good food and enjoy a night celebrating how God has used us for His glory.