Class of 1975

Thirty-five years is a long time. It’s the difference between being an 18 year old and a 53 year old.  It is the time span that has elapsed since I (Vic) graduated from High School. This past Saturday evening we had our 35^th year class reunion with about twenty others from Berean Academy’s class of 1975 along with many of their spouses. This was almost half the graduating class, and we enjoyed getting reacquainted with those who were there.

We are all so different now than we were at 18. The pictures of young guys and gals scattered around on the tables’ exuded energy, passion, and a lot more hair than was evident among us now! Thirty-five years of life have eroded us in many ways, built us up in many others, and shaped us inextricably into who we are today. Several of the class were easy to recognize – their features less changed than others. Many, I could not immediately place, but as I watched and listened I could sense the mannerisms and personalities that had lasted through the decades till now.

It was a somewhat surreal situation for me as we enjoyed an excellent dinner while refreshing acquaintances. These were people who I had spent many, many hours with – mostly in a classroom setting, but also in extracurricular activities, and a few as dorm mates.   I had stayed in touch with a few of my classmates through the years, but most I had not seen since graduation. In almost every sense these were strangers, yet we had a bond that was hard to identify and even harder to understand.

One thread of conversation sticks in my mind. Radford, who was – and continues to be – one of our class’  bright lights, pointed out how all of us had been impacted by the others in our class, and that in fact we are who we are today in part because of the interaction we had with each other as class mates. I suppose this is true to some extent for any relationships we might have, but probably more so in terms of our high school relationships when we were much more impressionable and we spent so much time together.

I doubt that any of us spent much time 35 years ago thinking how we were impacting each other – or being impacted by others. I doubt that we spent any time thinking about how we would change in 35 years because of our time with each other.  I very much doubt that most of us invest much of our time even today considering these kinds of things. We are much too focused on the immediate realities and the short term returns of our day to day life. But the fact remains that we do impact those we live with and interact with during that day to day life, and our impact can be long term – especially if we are a bit more intentional in how we live and interact.

The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at Thessalonica that they had become imitators of himself and others and of the Lord. In turn then they became models to the believers in Macedonia and Achaia… and their faith became known everywhere. This is exactly how we should be living our lives on a regular basis – imitating those who are more mature than us, and being models for those who may not be as far along in their Christian life. We should allow others to impact us in a positive way, so that we can grow and in turn impact others in a positive way. This seems to be a foundational truth about the Christian walk that we can easily ignore or forget about, but we will impact others whether we like it or not – for good or bad. How would our lives be different if we were more intentional about the way we allow others to impact us, and in turn how we impact others.