Reunion

I attended two different reunions this past weekend. We had our 40 year high school class reunion on Saturday, and our 81st family reunion (on my mothers side) on Sunday. They both took place in my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan.

I like reunions. I like them because they make me think. They make me remember. They make me relive and understand better where it is I have come from. That’s not always a great picture, but it is a real picture. I truly believe that the person that I am today, right now, at this very moment, is the culmination of every event, interaction, and person that God has placed in my life, from the moment of inception until now.

Nothing happens by chance. God knew from the very beginning of time what family I was going to be born into. He knew who my friends and classmates were going to be. He knew Janet before I did, and brought us both together at just the right time. He knows every breath that I am ever going to take, and He certainly knows the last breath that I will ever draw.

Reunions are a way of remembering how our lives are sewn together. A patchwork of different people all thrown into the mix. It’s about cousins and Aunts and Uncles getting reacquainted with each other, and remembering those who are no longer with us. It’s about re-telling old stories and looking at all of the tattered photographs from years gone by. It’s about how it all began on some old farm that existed long ago.

Reunions are about walking into a room and seeing a bunch of your old classmates and immediately going back in time. The giggling, the laughing, and sometimes the blushing, at memories from way back when. It’s about how each person has touched your life in some way, shape, or form. From your best friend, to the classmate you barely knew, each interaction adding to the outcome of your life.

We all have the tendency to slide off of the path from time to time and to get full of ourselves. To think that we are where we are because of who we are. Because of what we have done. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are who we are, and have done what we have done, because God has allowed it to happen. He has molded, shaped, and designed us to be exactly who we are.

There are 7 billion people on this planet for a reason. We are not meant to be alone. Reunions remind me of that. They remind me that God has infused people into my life, just as He has extracted people out of my life. Each having varying degrees of impact as to who I am. This also reminds me, and in no subtle way, that every interaction that I have with someone else, however large or small, has an impact on their life as well.

My hope is that as I reunited with some of my cousins and Aunts and Uncles and old high school classmates this past weekend, that I was able to interact with them in a way that was God honoring. That I was able to get out of the way of myself and to show them the love, and the respect, and the kindness that they all deserve.

Reunions are one of Gods ways of reminding us of where we have come from. They are also His way of letting us know where we should be headed.

 

What a great weekend it was! God bless all of you!

John