Most of us attended high school.  Most of us finished, some of us did not.  For me, high school was a highly memorable experience.  So when I traveled to California to attend my 50th (actually the 52nd but it was delayed because of Covid concerns) high school reunion recently, I was rather amazed to see where all of us had landed since we had graduated.

    Our paths ran the gambit from being a police chief to being a newspaper editor to being a professional baseball player to being an accountant to being an artist to being a newscaster to being a lawyer to being an event planner to being, for many of us, me included, teachers.  We've all had our journeys, we've all had our times.  And most of us are still standing.

    But not all of us.  I'm always shocked and saddened at the number of my classmates who have passed on . . . the list grows too quickly between each reunion.  This usually makes me think about the words of an old Hebrew prayer I shared when I eulogized at my mother's funeral, "Give permanence to the works of our hands [Lord], give permanence to the works of our hands."

    On our own, we cannot measure the import, meaning, or purpose of our lives.  We live, we do, we die.  And we're gone.  For most of us, high school is a long way in the past.  Yet because this is a purposeful universe, the things we did then resonate even today, and will continue to do so tomorrow.  Our lives never really die completely.  That is our comfort, that is our hope.

    Thank goodness for an intentionally meaningful creator.