Happy Birthday to Me

It may seem rather self-absorbed to write a post with that title, but it doesn't seem so to me and I will try to explain why as I go on. But, yes, today is my birthday. I am not 4 or 40 as the cake to the side could imply. There is no "4" in my age this year, at all, so stop guessing. I am not telling.



I love my birthday. It is at the time of year when summer is starting to creep in and flowers can be planted without too much risk of frost (what I have done with my birthday money for years). But this year is even more significant than remembering the day of my physical birth. As I watch nature awaken and blossom, I have been spending a bit of time thinking my spiritual birth and my spiritual journey. I have been wandering thru the swamp of shame and the fog of doubt while looking back at where I have been. I have been following a trail of hope scattered with tracks of grace.

(Ok, put simply, I have been looking at where I have been and where I am, by the grace of God, in preparation for giving my testimony on Wednesday to become a member of my church, tho I have to admit I liked the earlier, more interesting illustrations.)

Back to the story, I have been feeling some yucky stuff over the past couple weeks, you know, that undeserving and guilty feeling that slithers in and sets a perimeter around our spirits if we let it that causes us to stop any forward motion and close ranks to prevent being vulnerable. I have stubbornly refused to listen to it, knowing that it can bring nothing good into my life, when I came upon this passage from Max Lucado's book, In the Grip of Grace (1996):

"....who told you that you deserved forgiveness the first time? When you came to Christ did he know every sin you'd commetted up until that point? Yes. Did Christ know every sin you would commit in the future? Yes, he knew that too. So Jesus saved you, knowing all the sins you would ever commit until the end of your life? Yes. You mean he is willing to call you his child even though he knows each and every mistake of your past and future? Yes.
Sounds to me like God has already proven his point. If your sin were too great for his grace, he never would have saved you in the first place. Your temptation isn't late-breaking news in heaven. Your sin doesn't surprise God. He saw it coming. Is there any reason to think that the One who received you the first time wasn't received you every time?"

Wow. Sometimes, in my self centered way, I think things like this are written just for me, maybe for a birthday present...Thanks Max, oh, and you too God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us a...
Read more

He's Calling

Image
I didn't sleep well last night. I kept waking up, wanting to write. Those nights are annoying, particularly when I am working 12 hours the next day so I have no business getting out of bed to write. But here is the thing that kept bugging me...what if God is calling us not to greatness, but to smallness? Yeah, weird thing to keep a person awake, huh? Our group that went to the Leadership Summit are praying for ways that we can put what we learned into practice. Look around your neighborhood-there is so much need. Look around your coworkers-enough need to depress you. Look around the world-so much need it can paralyze. And then I think about this thing with callings... What if it isn't about being called to a thing, but to be like Him? What if it doesn't matter where I am or what I do but how I do it? What if His only desire is for me to respond to this broken world as He does? Right where I am? Jesus stopped to love the kids, he held up important people to talk to a woman, ...
Read more

The Reason for the Season

Image
This post is participating in today's blog carnival on the word LOVE.  To read other posts, click here . As all my friends texted holiday wishes this Christmas, one stood out.  This one seemed to go against all the "Keep Christ in Christmas" and "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper stickers.  This text said simply, U r the reason 4 the season. At first I thought she wrote it incorrectly, so I read it again looking for the typo.  But, there wasn't one. That's when it hit me: without me, there wouldn't be a need for Christmas. Ok, so that sounds somewhat egocentric, but hang in there with me.  God is this crazy amazing being made of love.  It is out of that crazy, amazing love that he chose to step into flesh, to show us that God does love us and that he didn't abandon us to the evil that surrounds us, to bring us back to this relationship.  God, the first and greatest lover, pursues us, rescues us.  O...
Read more