Birthdays

Another year, another birthday, and it is good to be able to celebrate the date of your birth when you consider the alternative. But still, those days do not seem to mean as much now that I am older. The parties and gifts, the cake, the friends that met for a celebration when we were young seldom gather for the same as a person gets on up there in years.

I just re-read the above paragraph and I may be giving the wrong impression here – I am not lobbying for a birthday party! Quite the opposite: In many ways I would be pleased to see it pass as simply one more day on the calendar this year. Birthday parties are over-rated at my age. Come to think of it, in the Bible, there are only two ‘birthday parties’ mentioned at all and both ended in disaster. The first one recorded takes place in the book of Genesis in chapter 40, where Pharaoh’s birthday party concluded with the hanging of his chief butler from a tree. The second was a wild affair thrown to honor the birthday of Herod, as mentioned in the New Testament. It was during that raucous shin-dig that Herod’s own niece caught his eye with her dancing and demanded the head of John the Baptist as her reward.

Now, none of my birthday parties to this date have been that extreme; though I’ll admit there have been a few where things did not quite go as planned. These days I have a requirement to limit my sugar intake, and as far as gifts go I can think of nothing more important than simply having my family around me to acknowledge the event. When we all get together, and we will, there will be no make-shift gallows and the only head on a plate will most likely be my own.

A birthday should be a reminder - a yearly wake-up call to acknowledge that life is brief. Time flies and each day of our lives should be made to count as a result. It is hard to explain this phenomenon to a person in the midst of their youth, but the older we get the more we are able to grasp the concept of aging and of our own mortality. It stares back at us from the mirror each morning as we prepare for the day, and reminds us when we climb stairs or try to read the smaller print in a newspaper.

“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14

We are not promised a tomorrow that may never find us living in it. We do have today. Therefore, it is our duty and our obligation to do the best we can each day by living the life that God would have us live. His love should show through from the place that He resides within our hearts in everything we say and do. Solomon said it much better than I will ever be able to do when he put it this way: “If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.”

Those are true words, indeed. They are also something worth considering not only on my birthday, but every day that God allows me to continue to live on this earth. I have work to do this year…