Birthdays!

Today is my birthday!  I am 42, and I know to some that is very old, to others it is very young.  To me…well it’s just where I am.  I have never minded having birthdays, I guess I have always thought that you either have birthdays or you don’t.  I would rather have them.  Further, if we have them we might as well celebrate them.  Maybe the great musician, James Taylor, was right when he sang, “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time!”

I am telling you all of this about my birthday not because I want extra attention today, but because I want to think deeply about birthdays for a moment.  (My wife always teases me, “can’t we just watch this movie or TV show without over thinking it”.    Apologies Andra! Indulge me one more time-now we can add birthdays to the list.)  It struck me this morning as rather odd that we celebrate birthdays as an individual’s special day.  Let’s be honest, on November 14, 1971, I really didn’t do much of anything but show up.  Everyone else (particularly my mother) did all the work.  There were all of the doctors and nurses, my dad anxiously supporting as he could, grandparents, uncles and aunts, friends and others praying and nervously awaiting my arrival, ready to welcome me at a moment’s notice.  In many ways this day is really more about them than me.

Then, I realized that there is something even deeper here than just who did the most work that day.  Birthdays are a day to recognize just how much of our lives are pure grace.  It was God who made each one of us.  Our mothers’ carried us and went through labor to bring us into the world.  We were surrounded by the love and care of fathers and family, doctors and nurses who didn’t know any of us but gave everything that day so that we could experience life.  All of this given first, before we could ask for it, work for it, or prove ourselves worthy of it; pure grace!  It sounds a lot like the kind of love God wanted to show through Jesus.

So on this 42^nd birthday, I am more aware of grace than perhaps I have ever been before and I truly feel surrounded by it.  That is the best gift of all.  I write these words a grateful man. 

Brett