I attended a 50-year reunion this weekend. You are starting to do a little math right now as you try to figure out what type of reunion this must have been. I’d like to say it was my Kindergarten reunion, but alas, I am a little older than that! Hopefully you’ve narrowed it down to high school. (Actually for me, it was a reunion for my sophomore year in high school.) The dates weren’t exact for this particular reunion, nor were we all from the same class or the same school. That’s because this wasn’t a typical high school reunion. This was a reunion of our church high school group, complete with the man and his wife who was our youth minister at the time who had had a profound effect on us all.

“You’re kidding,” one attendee reported a friend of hers as saying. “You’re going to a church youth group reunion? I’ve never heard if such a thing.” Well, you have now, and this was no small deal. One man came from Illinois, a couple from Colorado. Many came from all over California.

The outpouring of love and gratitude to the youth director and his wife who had made such a lasting impression on us all was tangible. I have often reflected on this man and his passion for the Lord, for the word of God and for me, and looking around the room as we shared a meal together made it evident that I was not alone. We meant something to each other 50 years ago, and coming back together was an opportunity to find out we still did.

I have often decried the fact that I have had a rather rootless existence compared to others I get to know who have long-standing family histories going back generations. “Family” for me has never been much more than my nuclear family, and growing up in California fifty years ago does not give you much of a sense of roots. I even took my family back to New England for seven years in the 1980s, and part of what I was seeking was a respect for history and heritage. We found that heritage there, though it wasn’t ours. We experienced it and touched it, but we were never really “in” it. I learned that you don’t really belong in New England unless you’ve had relatives buried in the church graveyard, and that’s already full. Those names are already established. You’re either in, or you’re looking in from the outside like we were. You can appreciate it, as we did, but you cannot be a part of it.

But this weekend I found my roots. I found my own history. I found a different kind of heritage – something that had not occurred to me before this weekend – and something even more important than family history. I found a heritage of faith – the beginnings of my spiritual journey that has taken me a long way and back again. I found a wealth to tap into just be being together and celebrating the fact that we are all still following Christ and will follow Him right on into eternity.

You might want to trace your spiritual heritage today. Who are the people along the way who have influenced your walk with Christ? Even if you are relatively new to faith in Jesus, you should be able to locate those along the way who contributed to your own spiritual journey. You just might find out, as I did, that you are wealthier than you thought.