Ten Year Reunion

I think I'm done processing my high school ten-year reunion.

First off, props to our friend Matt for coming to the reunion from freakin' Alaska. Nik and I decided all the rest of you are without excuse.

Next, I can't believe it's been ten years. I don't feel that old. I know there are some of you out there reading this who are much older than me, and that I'm just a young whipper-snapper. But the bottom line is, I'm almost thirty. According to Psalm 95, I'm almost halfway there. That's wild.

The reunion was cool. It was probably different than a lot of your reunions because I graduated from a small Christian school. I think there were only 23 people in my graduating class. This made for an interesting dynamic for our class, because everyone knew everyone...relatively well. There were the usual cliques and relationships, but the intensity level of everything was amplified because of the size of the class. It was easy to have community, and I think that for the most part, given that stage of life, we had some pretty cool friendships and some fun times.

At my small Christian school, they really drilled the concept of "class unity" into us. I've come to understand that the whole concept was a bunch of crap. In the mind of the people leading us at that school, I think that a better word for "class unity" was "total conformity". It was unity at a price, the price being our hearts and a good part of our brains. Religion was taught and conformity was expected. I had no problem conforming to the rules, they were my authority and I needed to submit to them. I wish so badly though, that I had not accepted that way of thinking. Of summing my relationship with Jesus up by how long my hair was, what music I listened to, how I dressed or if I used the right version of the Bible. At the same time, I was casually making out with girls (three of whom I had to apologize to prior to the reunion in order to look them in the eye), running myself senseless trying to keep up with the rules and expectations, judging others (even my friends)for not "measuring up" to the/my rules, and lying awake at night wondering if I had kept enough of the rules to not go to hell.

It's impossible to write the words that could explain how much I've changed and how real the Jesus is that I know now. I want my friends from high school to know that, but the reunion was just weird. It's not like you can step out of someone's life for ten years and then step back in and offer to unveil truth to them -- I don't know what life has thrown at them over the past ten years or how they've grown or changed. Maybe they need to unveil truth to me.

And that was the hardest part of the reunion: none of us could really know the other for who we really are, even though I felt like we should. It was this massive two hour juxtaposition.

I hope that most of my friends from high school know these things, but for those that don't, here's who I am:
I'm Jay, a kid who in high school covered his fear of hell and unacceptance with confidence and pseudo-spirituality. I did not love Jesus, I feared Jesus and I feared His "leaders" in my life. That is why I was who I was. If you liked me, that's cool, maybe you were wearing the same masks. If I hurt you by my ignoranceand arrogance, I'm sorry. If you were clued into my hypocrisy, thanks for not hitting me with a two by four.
Now I know that Jesus loves me, and I love Him. I'm free from a slavery to rules and restrictions and have embraced fully what it means to be a slave to Jesus -- and the freedom that that brings.
I've had to deal with two kids with cystic fibrosis and have found God to be a God of grace, mercy and hope in the darkest valley of my life. God cares about my heart and its hurts and He holds it and heals in a way that only He can. It is in His grace that I am comforted. In high school, grace was a part of our theology. I've now learned that grace is who God is. In high school, we learned that God is Judge. I have learned that God is my Father. In high school, we learned to come to Jesus to not go to hell. I have learned that my eternal life is right now and I can have it so abundantly and live so freely.

I hope that you (my high school friends and the readers of this blog)understand who Jesus can really be -- not Christianity, not our churches or systems, just Jesus.

He is the source of life and I don't think that has anything to do with eternity.

"The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly." John 10:10