Revisiting my past

Five years down the road and I will be turning fifty. I'm not ruing the day, neither am I rushing it - hardly possible anyway. I'm just trying to appreciate the fact that I can teach about truly historic events while reminding myself that I was alive at the time they happened, watching live TV coverage while e.g. the Rumanians in 1989 were throwing off the fetters that had tied them to Communist ideology.


Still, if sometimes bugged by ageing, there's a slight comfort in the knowledge that my peers from the past are ageing just as rapidly, or slowly, as I am. And, please remember: age is a phenomenon that primarily concerns my skin, and not my brain, or my propensity for doing things some would regard as belonging to the domain of adolescence. 


FEBRUARY 11, 2011, 9 P.M.


So, my only true concern on Friday afternoon, February 11, was whether I would recognize the other ex-youths of my then church, all convocating for a reunion arranged by three former youth leaders, all now into their late 50s or early 60s. Funnily enough, the invitation for this get-together in Evangeliekirken, Moss (The Gospel Church) came my way via Facebook. Thank God for that innovation, as the event would hardly have come about without it, the chief reason being that neither of the three youth leaders possessed any other means of ascertaining our whereabouts, except in a few cases.


The distance between Bergen and Moss, my adopted hometown and the town of my childhood respectively, is forbidding. Yet I made it a priority in the back of my mind to try my utmost to be able to mingle with the old-timers the moment the reunion was brought to my attention. I've maintained a very limited number of friendships, some close - some peripheral, over the years, which meant that I was really welcoming a chance to see people who to larger or lesser extents had all contributed to a period of my youth that now stands out as very formative and rewarding.


My old friend Halvard, 45 years old that is, picked me up at the airport, and with less than an hour to spare, we were soon speeding along the highway, aiming for a quick change of clothes at his home before heading for the premises of this Gospel Church. Entertaining ourselves with flashbacks, anecdotes, brief memories of past flirts etc. along the way wasn't hard at all. It's second nature to both of us, as geography deprives us most of our days from really getting to do new things together.


FAMILIAR FACES


Seven o'clock saw us parading through the front door to the sanctuary itself, warmly greeted by Trygve, his face as friendly as ever, his belly protruding slightly more now compared to 25 years ago. I had already spotted some very familiar faces while walking down from the parking lot, so I was increasingly warming up to the imminent prospect of the staple reunion game: "See who remembers who first". In the suffocatingly small hall I shed my excess clothing and started meandering through the relative throng of bodies lining the walls, settees, tables and goodness knows what. And suddenly, one after the ather, smiles of recognition began bursting, and names I hadn't called in years gratifyingly and comfortingly sprang to mind more or less instantaneously.


So I was back. Back in the Pentecostal church that welcomed me lovingly on a Wednesday afternoon in November of 1982, and that had constituted my spiritual home for almost four years, inviting me in on some of the most unforgettable moments of my life. I was back among people who I later would arrogantly, and erroneously, write off as being stuck in old-fashioned, irrelevant and spiritually empty ways. I was back among people who were still faithfully trudging along in their walk with the Lord, much less charismatic and self-conscious than other people I have come to know. But as the night wore on, I soon had to admit that 25 years on, and suddenløy I could not decide that easily who was the more on fire for Jesus.


REMEMBERING TO BE GRATEFUL


Nostalgia didn't carry the day, albeit literally hundreds of old photos flashed onto the white screen, some from as far back as 1968. What was firmly etched onto my conciousness that night was plain gratitude. Certainly we munched pizza until we really had had overfill, and, yes, we downed, ravenously, liberal amounts of hot, black coffee. And when nutrition facts should have talked us out of it, we chose instead to gulp down massive slices of cream-inundated cakes. And yet: I will remember this night as a time when I was alerted anew to the fact that I may have come quite a long way, but still I owe a debt of gratitude to countless brothers and sisters, most of whom I  am now physically far removed from.


Camp nights, choir practices, Friday night youth group in homes, meals and hilarious practical jokes. They were all made possible by quite a few of these less conspicuous saints, the ones that never get media coverage, who seldom receive rounds of applause for their efforts, but who still faithfully carry out whatever business they sense the Lord has called them to. And for that I laud them. For that I thanked them afresh as feeding frenzy was overlapped by testimony night. For that I will remember them.


Thank you Øyvind, Trygve, Magnus. I now stand mildly reprieved for allowing my mind to temporarily relinquish moments when your quiet obedience paved way for new lessons in practical discipleship.