Past, Present and Future
Jeremiah 29:4-7
A few weeks ago, Renee and I headed off for a trip down memory lane.
Have any of you ever returned to your old elementary school or other place from your childhood to have a feeling that it was different than you remember?
The halls seemed smaller or other impossible physical differences that make the place familiar but different?
Many of you know that about a month ago Renee and I attended my 30th High School Reunion.
Several things became relatively real to me as the event approached.
- I started remembering some of my dreams for my future. Going to NY or CA and working in theater or the movies on the technical side of the business.
- I planned to marry my High School Sweet heart and together we would fact the world, ultimately living happily ever after.
- I planned to be a success.
On about Wednesday before the trip, I started to realize how long ago it was that I was in High school.
I know that many of you in here have me beat. I am just sharing a personal apocalypse, an unveiling, a revelation of my past.
It was like looking at a snapshot of my life thirty years, over half my life, ago.
I started to get a little uncomfortable.
For me and for many people, High School was one of the big uncomfortable milestones in life.
While I stand before you today as a suave, debonair, popular, secure, accomplished man.
-- In High School I was generally considered ……I am not sure that I can recall the right word from the 70’s. A nerd.
In HS I was one of the few kids that drove a really new vehicle to school. It was 1977, I had a job which allowed me to drive have 1976 Ford. It had custom paint job, the colors would make a Georgia Tech Yellow jacket fan proud, yellow with thick Black stripes. It had a big V8 engine with 4 in the floor. I guess I was spoiled a bit because it did not cost me a dime.
Because of this I could carry several friends to school on a regular basis. In fact I could carry up to up to 66 of my friends to school. I was the School bus driver and I drove on a route from my home to school everyday. Nerdy!
I was the film projector set up person. I ran the technology for the microphones and lights in our auditorium as the leader of the stage crew. Nerdy!
I worked as an office assistant answering phones on the old manual switchboard. Nerdy!
- Those examples are just the tip of the ice burg of my nerd like tendencies.
-- Let’s just say that I did not run, play or hang out with the “popular” crowd.
At the time I knew this was true. I knew that there were some circles that I was not wanted or welcome in.
I was not affiliated with any sports team. I was only in 1 club the Thespian society (Theater club).
But, there was one group where I was widely accepted.
I was in the band. I was welcome in the band. I had lots of friends in the band.
Members of the band are not automatically nerds. However, if we were to calculate a scale of nerds per hundred people, the band held the highest ratio of any group in the school. One exception might have been the physics club.
In the band, I was in the nerd category which easily might be considered at least 50% of the band members. But, strangely enough, I was not the nerdy-ist of the nerds….
I was actually half way to being only slightly nerdy when evaluated with this group.
I had friends that made me look normal in comparison.
In band, I was free to be me. I was free to do the best I could, and not be totally shunned because of my personality and physical characteristics.
I could do the best I could with my instrument and not be kicked out of the group for not being perfect. For not wearing the right clothes. For working in the office. For being the Vice-principal’s pet.
Very few members of the band would consider themselves perfect in any way. Which from my recollection was different that what others groups seemed to portray.
So, band is the place where I had my best friends….My best memories. It was a group that allowed me to belong and encouraged me to grow as a person and musician.
Band was the group that gave me my roots and strength that allowed me to keep existing in a world where I did not readily fit in.
-- On my reunion weekend, I found it strange that I recognized faces of people as they came into the room. Faces that My mind said “you know this person” - “you don’t have a clue of a name..but you know this person.”
I would grab a glance at the name tag and read the name.
It was sort of odd; while I vaguely recognized both…. I had no memories of the former relationship for the vast majority of people that I spoke to.
I would look at the name tag and see a name, smile. We would shake hands and hug. And say things like it’s been a long time….
There was one thing that made me feel uncomfortable. It seems that many if not most of the people that attended the reunion, recognized me and most surprising…they knew my name.
Not the name that was on the name tag. That was my real name.
They knew the name that my parents always call me.
They name that everyone called me until I started working in the business world.
Theses people, with the sound of a question in their voice would say, Tab?
My mind said, you know that face, you recognize the name but you have no recall of why there is a connection. What did we do together????
What was our relationship?
-- Had I had experienced some kind of medical memory loss and forgotten large portions of my teen memories?
Sometime after 9:30, the Leaders of the event…I later was reminded that they were the former class officers, grabbed up a microphone and started giving out awards.
Things like most recently married, youngest children, most children, most changed since HS, most unchanged since HS.
It was like a lightening bolt hit me…. I was at the wrong reunion.
- I went to the same high school and graduated in the same year.
- I had heard their names and seen them in one situation or another hundreds of times some 30 years ago.
- But it was very likely that I had never had any kind of conversation with most of them
- I knew of them. I had seen and observed them.
The reason that these people were not familiar to me was because I never knew them.
And they never knew me.
Renee pointed out that in the photo slide show of old annual pictures and personal party snapshots that had been showing all night…. there was not a single picture of the band. Almost no pictures of people that were band members.
Majorettes and dancers and football players…yes they were all there.
But no marching band photos from football games, or concerts or pep rallies.
--- The awards had all been given to the people in the formerly “popular crowd.”
The “popular crowd” were all enjoying the recollection of “their” High School days and catching up with their old friends.
They were remembering the parties and great football plays that they had shared.
The reunion was helping them to feel good to rekindle dreams they once had.
I on the other hand, I felt like I was at the wrong reunion and I felt out of place.
I was in a room full of familiar strangers.
My dreams had been different. My success and friendships were with different people and different settings.
--- Here is my point this morning. Our memories and experiences of the past are great and useful. Our past is something that has shaped us for who we have grown to be today.
A reunion of any kind can help us to see the changes, wrinkles, weight, hair changes. They can also awaken realistic recollections of vision and hope that may have changed with time.
Most of us have hit many other milestones that have changed our direction and vision in our lives. Some have boosted us in where and who we are. Some of us have hit milestones that slowed and even stopped our plans. We cling to life of survival instead of thriving and growth.
My reunion was a moment of awakening, perhaps a temporary return to a time that I remembered as being pretty good. I was taken back down memory lane to stroll through the good Old days.
But, I had the feeling that I better understood the old saying that we can’t go home again. Instead of connecting to warm fuzzy feelings, I was reminded of the harder side of High School.
Let me read to you from Jeremiah 29:4-7 -
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Israel was defeated and was giving up on life. They were living as slaves and had no hope or plans for the future. Their memories of Jerusalem, and home the good life and all they expected in life was becoming an old memory.
The prophet shares God’s promise of a return in 70 years. But, they only way that the nation would survive was to do something more that just survive.
They were to thrive and grow as a people as families and as a nation.
They were to live active and peaceful lives in the place that God had planted them.
-- I wonder how I would feel about my life if all my High School dreams and hopes and came true?
Would I be satisfied?
Would I speak with some kind of a NY accent…yuck.
I guess that at some point most people feel like their lives never quiet turned out the way they dreamed in younger years. Some have had family problems, health problems, financial problems.
Some have ended up in places that they never dreamed of and thought that they had really messed up.
In Israel’s case they were sent into exile. Their dreams of their home land were destroyed and they felt that God had left them. But God send a message through Jeremiah. To use a common cliché or proverb, “Grow where you are planted.” Or transplanted.
Our past is important to remember and to learn from but, it isn’t necessarily a measuring stick for how you are doing today. The perspective of success changes with maturity and experience.
A plant that is alive in a pot is not necessarily healthy. I struggled for a year to keep some poinsettia plants alive. It tried to help with light, and water and fertilizer. The plant struggled and really looked bad.
A person that just lives is not healthy either. God has a message for mankind. God has an expectation that no mater the physical situation good or bad there is to be signs of healthy growth.
From time to time plants and people need to bloom and produce seeds.
Weather your life is picture perfect or has the feeling of exile. We are called by God to keep on living. But, not just living….we are expected to grow and prosper where ever we are and under every situation.
The world has a tendency to steal our energy, our time and to keep up from flushing. The economy and the raging debate over change is a powerful growth inhibitor. It affects everyone and not just Christians.
John 10:10 (NIV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
As Christians, with Jesus in our life’s, we are to have a life and to have it in abundance.
A full life means that every day lives with an expectation of tomorrow.
It means that what ever out situation wherever we are planted from time to time we come to full bloom.
Folks, what my reunion experience taught me is that sometimes we need to revisit our past so we can find real value in what we have today.
-- And to catch a glimpse of our new and God improved expectations for tomorrow.
It can help us to remember that our hopes and dreams might have been limitations instead of goals.
It reminded me that there is someone that will always remember my name and will be glad to see me because we have a relationship.
It can remind us that no matter what our earthly situation God has a future home that will allow us to celebrate His accomplishments on our behalf.
All Glory be to God!
