The highest return on investments

Clearly, I am a reunion fanatic!

Today, no fewer than two. First, a reunion lunch for those who attended St Nicholas’ CofE Primary School and then, by sheer coincidence, our annual dinner at the Royal Hotel for those in my form at Waterloo Grammar School, 1960–1967.

But that’s just the beginning. Next month there’s a reunion for those of us who studied Economics at my Cambridge college, Catz, from 1967 to 1970. All five of us, meeting in some distinguished location in London.

And just this week there was a kind of reunion, the annual service for retired clergy in the Liverpool Diocese, some of whom I have known for more than 50 years!

Maybe I should take the initiative and organise a reunion for those of us who shared a delivery suite, although how I came to be born in the Carvery of the Royal Hotel near Coventry is a subject for another blog.

Clearly, such reunions meet a deep-seated need, given that some of those attending have travelled a fair distance – economist Andrew from Dublin and, more spectacularly, WGS Colin from Vancouver Island, BC.

And we don’t, as it happens, spend much time reminiscing. It’s very much about who we are today.

I guess a key factor is that we share experiences from a time in our lives when our personalities and characters were being formed. Certainly, my seven years at WGS were hugely formative. I arrived as a boy and left as a man – at least, it seemed so at the time.

As it happens, this evening Keith is attending our form reunion for the first time. I haven’t seen him for nearly 60 years, apart from a brief encounter at a funeral last year when we managed to exchange contact details. Even so, I feel I know him very well, and I suspect we will simply pick up where we left off.

As human beings, we enjoy meeting up. We value time spent not just with family and close friends but with acquaintances and those we have encountered along the way.  We enjoy being together. 

That is how God has made us.

I’ve blogged before about how Jesus seemed to spend much of his time eating, even inviting himself to meals. I suggest it wasn’t simply because he enjoyed food – which he may well have done – but especially because he enjoyed being with people. As he said to Zacchaeus: “I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). Sharing a table was a way of sharing a life.

And that is how God has made us, for relationship. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God declares before creating Eve as a companion for Adam.

As I have mentioned before, I read a psalm every day – and nowadays turn to ChatGPT, which unfailingly offers an excellent commentary.

Today it was Psalm 8, which may surprise you as the first psalm in the Psalter devoted entirely to praising God.  It is one of the most beautiful psalms, a hymn celebrating both the greatness of God and the astonishing dignity he gives to human beings.

It begins by praising the sheer majesty of God: “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” But notice that little word our. He is our God.

Given who God is, and the immense size and scale of his creation, isn't this – to say the least – rather presumptuous? Which leads to the obvious question asked by the Psalmist: “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

And then comes the astonishing answer: “Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour” (v. 5).

Notice that word: crowned!

The God whose glory fills the heavens is also the God who enters into a close, personal relationship with his people; he even honours us. The psalmist is astonished not simply that God knows we exist, but that he actively concerns himself with us.

We might expect the conclusion to be that human beings are insignificant. Instead, the psalm moves in precisely the opposite direction. Despite our apparent insignificance in the vastness of creation, God has given us an extraordinarily honoured place.

Moreover, notice which people are being honoured. The distinguished? The powerful? Those occupying the upper echelons of society?

Quite the opposite. “Out of the mouths of babes and infants, you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger” (v. 2).

God's strength is demonstrated through weakness. In fact, Jesus himself quotes this verse when children praise him in the Temple and the religious authorities object (Matthew 21:16).

There is something deeply characteristic of God's kingdom here. His purposes are accomplished not simply through the powerful but through those whom the world regards as insignificant.

Essentially, our significance – indeed, our very worth – does not depend upon intelligence, physical strength, independence, productivity or social standing, but simply upon God's grace.

And speaking here as an economist, albeit one who has been out of the subject for many years, the highest return on investments is when we invest in relationships. In my case today, that means paying for two meals in smart locations!

But for God's, an investment beyond all calculation: the giving of his very self on the cross of Jesus.