Five years ago* I attended our forty year high school reunion. Forty years. It’s been at least thirty years since I’ve seen my classmates. Not classmates, friends. Life-long friends.
Ours is a small class, about thirty, if memory serves. We fellowshipped, enjoyed dinner together, discovered fascinating things we did not know about one other. We talked, and talked, and talked and talked. And when we finished talking, we talked some more. We laughed, mostly about hair loss, waist loss, and time loss. We talked about family, children, and grandchildren. And more grandchildren. Did I mention grandchildren?
A few conversations danced slowly around the pains of life, but we did not really go deeply into that, for we were experiencing the joys of reunion with family and relished the wonder of relationship in its fullness, in its vibrancy, in its celebratory dynamic in our hearts. But in family you can see behind the eyes, so to speak, the edges of past trial, the unseen scars, the broken roads taken, the regrets, yet we also see and find hopes found only in the presence of others in the reunions of life. When pictures were projected of our senior year we laughed, giggled, and joked about the physical changes and the odd fashions of the past.
And then when those that have gone on before us appeared, we paused. We paused in ourselves for an instant, as the missing man formation honors the hero, the fallen, we embraced the ones missing from our family, and for that instant their lives were known again in us, in our minds and hearts, for they live still.
As my wife and I drove home, I felt homesick. I struggled with where this came from and I realized it was a good homesick. The kind you want, not the depressing loss of the presence of someone, but the titanic pull from the lonely trail we often face in life, giving us the healing gatherings found in the presence of others. As I looked deeper into my heart to understand my personal response to a small class reunion, I found something simple, something wondrous, something powerful.
I found thankfulness.
For in those few hours, the God of this universe did in me what he is guilty of doing all the time. He gave me a gift. The gift of brothers and sisters I have been far away from. I had sailed into the world on the winds of youth, and now, here, today, I returned once again to the safe, peaceful harbor of home. We all have. And I find hope in this harbor for future days.
God opened a small window and let me look back and be reminded of how long he has walked with me, how loyal he is, and how giving he is. I looked through this window and, as if I had been drawn into a time machine, he dusted off my memories, my heart, and most of all, he dusted off long lost bonds of friendship with others and gave it as a beautiful gift to me.
He knows the pains of our journey. He knows the heartaches, the losses, the failures and the summits of victory. From there and then to here and now, he has been walking beside us, watching us, marveling at us as we fight the good fights, sweat in the heated sun of the full day, and are overwhelmed when new life comes into his world. He has always been close by, in the complex and the lofty, as well as the lowly and mundane.
He reminds us he is truly a pursuing God, relentlessly chasing us into every passing hour of this mysterious and incredibly awe-inspiring epic into which we have been cast by his hand.This great universe, seen and unseen, is his dance floor. He built it to dance with us. He extends his hand to us to join him in this greatest of all dances.
There will be another reunion. It will be a much larger and greater affair. It will be beyond our wildest imaginings. The greatest of our theologians cannot fully capture it from scripture, but it is surely there, for one of the most telling attributes of God is that he is not a religious being, but he is, in fact, a deeply personal God. He knows every atom of our being, both physically and spiritually speaking. It is in this profoundly intimate and personal pursuit of us by God that we discover his yearning to be in our lives. It is from this yearning by God that comes his unbelievable demonstration of who he is. He is the God of creation and reveals himself as such, and is expectantly awaiting our response to his self-revelation.
And this can only point to one thing―the ultimate reunion with God when his Son, Jesus Christ, our living Savior, returns for us.
The greatest reunion of all.
“The trudge of the weary in the night descending from the darkness of the wilderness simply seeks abode along the simple path. It is our life, our dance, and our journey to seek in the darkness a trail to the lights in the distance, the lights of warmth, hope, and possibility. We traipse through the night, through the jungles, with cold, heartless knives in the wind piercing us. The lights of the city draw us with promises of an eternity of sustenance and the presence of others, of things beyond our dreams.
"And God, an eternity with God.
"God draws us to this city with his music of heaven. When our pursuing Creator reveals himself to us, the drawing is immeasurably compelling and uncontainable. It is unspeakable joy we discover, and we find it all along the road.”[i]
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‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:14 NIV
©2018 by Ben Bounds. All rights reserved.
*(Originally written September, 2018. Mildly edited for today. Hope it blesses! I'm posting now as our forty-fifth reunion approaches)
[i] Bounds, Ben. The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God. Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2017, p.177–178 (italicized quote).
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We can come to know Christ through confession of our sins and repentance (turning away from sin). Let me encourage you to do this by talking to God through prayer. Here is an idea of how you might do that:
"Dear God, I believe your son Jesus Christ died in my place on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day following his death. I confess my sins, all of them, to you now with a humble heart. I repent of those sins and ask you to empower me with your Holy Spirit in overcoming further sin. Amen”
If you prayed this or a similar prayer committing your life to Christ and becoming one of his followers, let me encourage you to find a good, Bible-believing church. If you live in the Weslaco/Rio Grand Valley area of Texas, let me invite you to the church I attend, Mid-Valley Assembly (www.midvalleyassembly.com).
Begin talking to God in prayer and reading the Bible daily. A good way to begin to read the Bible is to start with the Book of John in the New Testament.
Feel very free in connecting with me if you need any further help in your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can do this via the above email or facebook page or this web page.
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Mercy Road Ministries was founded and now led by Ben Bounds. Ben has pastored churches across Texas for over thirty years and is an ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). He holds a BA in Pastoral Ministry and Biblical Studies from Southwestern Assemblies of God College and did graduate theological studies at the BMA Theological Seminary.
Ben's first book, The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God, was released on 12.08.2017 through Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. It is available in paperback and hardback through your preferred bookseller (Mardels, Barnes and Noble, etc.) and paperback, hardback as well as ebook through online book retailers (www.christianbook.com, www.cokesbury.com, www.amazon.com, www.booksamillion.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, etc.).
Ben is the host of Staying in Bounds, an on-air Bible devotional broadcast multiple times daily on KWJV 103.7 FM Weslaco, TX which can also be heard worldwide online at www.kwjvthestar.com.
Ben and his wife, Linda, together have four adult children and nine grandchildren. They live in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Ben can be contacted for preaching engagements at benbounds695@gmail.com or 903.441.3279. Ben can also be contacted via his website @ www.benbounds.com, which is also his blog and contains more information about his ministry.
Follow Ben @ https://www.facebook.com/mercyroadministries/ and this website www.benbounds.com.
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