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How do you have a reunion with a group of people when you have never met most of them? You can do that when the group is made up of people with whom you have something special in common.

Many reunions are with people who attended school together and maybe even graduated together. A couple of years ago, Plainview High School’s class of ‘73 came back together to celebrate our golden graduation anniversary. None of us had changed one bit. (Please God, forgive me for that one.) 

Churches have reunions, but they usually call them homecomings. Members don’t graduate from church, but they do move away to another town or another church across town. In the last month, Jean and I have gone back to a couple of churches where I once served as pastor. Those returns were most enjoyable times of reunion.

Last week, I had a reunion of a most unusual kind. I did not know most of the people who attended, but we did all have something in common. We had all gone through cardiac rehab. Each year, for the past three years, East Alabama Medical Center has hosted a Heart-and-Lung Reunion. This time last year, I was in the midst of 12-weeks of cardiac rehab, 3 times each week. It is amazing how we get to know some of those people and make new friends. There were only a couple of people from my group at the reunion, and a few others that I knew. It was good to see the old friends again, and to make some new ones too. As old folks tend to do, we compared and contrasted our surgeries, as well as how well we are doing now. We asked questions like, “Did you have stints or bypass.” The bypass folks then asked, “How many did you have?” We all know what that means, and you probably do too, but just in case, its how many bypasses did you have. I apologize to the stint patients, but we by-passers tend to think of ourselves as the A leaguers. Even among us, the more you had, the more you can, well, brag. Some guys are even known to show off their chest scar. We have scars on our leg too, where they removed a vein to use for the graft, but those scars are much smaller and hardly worthy of rolling up a pants leg to show off! Most of the drill sergeants that coached us through rehab are their too. Actually, we love those folks because they are the ones who helped us get back up and going. They are also the ones that put these reunions together. We had refreshments, mostly heart-healthy ones, of course. We played games, like heart bingo. We had a speaker and testimonies. Most of all, we had a great time.

Reunions are fun and good for us. I grew up in the days when we had family reunions. I remember attending two-or-three each year. Grandparents and great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins came from everywhere. There was always enough potato salad, fried bird, deviled eggs, and pear salad to compete with Morrisons or a Western Sizzlin buffet, only better! It is sad that we don’t still do these much anymore. I have cousins that I haven’t seen since we were children. We don’t even know our own kin anymore.

The Bible says, “Forsake not the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some.” That is true for church, but it is also true for families and those we’ve been together with in days gone by.