Birthdays

There was a comic entertainer/variety show personality named Jack Benny who was popular when I was young and even before I arrived on planet Earth.  Part of his persona was to lay claim to the age of 39 for which he must have celebrated many anniversaries.  Unlike so many in Hollywood (and much of America today), he had no illusion of his advancing years, he simply used it as a sort of calling card.

We dye our hair, lift our faces, tuck our tummies, do whatever we can to make the tide of age seem to be held at bay.  I believe it was the late comedian, Joan Rivers, who quipped, "If I  have one more face lift, my belly button will be on my forehead."  She and so many others pulled out all the stops but the years do not stop and the aging process is not abated.  Birthdays stack up until the last one is reached.

How many of those birthdays we'll have is a mystery to us (actually we only have one birthday, the rest our anniversaries) but not to God.  "A person's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed" (Job 14:5).  I'm not sure exactly how this works. But I don't subscribed to a specific day of death being determined, rather to a limit of how many days we could reach.

One who lived to be 75 might have reached 80 if he had taken better of himself but would not have seen 85 regardless of cardio sets, nutritional compliance or stress reduction.  Some are born with a propensity to high blood pressure, low sugar levels, enlarged hearts, etc.  Some people do everything right and die young, others eat nothing but junk food and only run to catch the ice cream truck but live to be quite elderly.  The limit has been set.

However, how healthy one is and well he/she feels is more determined by choices.  And, how close to the limit set by God one reaches is also impacted by choices.  "For physical training is of some value" (1 Tim 4:8a).  It does make a difference how well we treat our bodies.

But it doesn't make much difference how long we live if we aren't making a difference.  For while physical training is of some value, "godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come" (1 Tim 4:8b).  How long we live pales in comparison to how well we live, who we serve as we are living and what we are achieving while on this planet.

Birthdays ought to be celebrated as the anniversaries of another year in service to God and our work in his kingdom here on Earth.  Birthdays are gifts from God that are portioned out to us not earned by us or determined by us.  God gives us another birthday in order to allow more opportunity to make a difference in this world.  As such, the two dates on our headstone are not nearly as important as what takes place in the dash (-) between them.  Mine is 1955 - 20??   I don't care so much about the ?? as I do the - which precedes them.  Jus' Say'n.