My Birthin'day

Today I am 36 years old. David calls it my birthin'day.

This morning, half-dazed and wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I stumbled into the bathroom and noticed something unusual. I saw a gift bag sitting on the sink with a beautiful card from my husband (Some days I still can't believe I have a husband). And the card had the word "Love" written on the front of it.

This is when the following hit me:

1. Today is your birthday and you are 36.
2. About five months ago, you married David and moved away from everything to be with him.
3. Your wonderful husband calls you "Love," and expresses his love in a million other ways, too.
4. Life might be short, but God is always up to something new.

OK, so it took awhile for me to have all these thoughts, but come they did. And as the morning progresses, as I think about all that is happening in my life, I want to do something with significance today--anything. This is because today I am 36, and in what will seem like tomorrow, I will be 46; then suddenly 56, and so on.

Life moves by at a steady clip, and there is no revisiting yesterday. Only pressing on toward what is ahead, as Paul stressed in the book of Phillippians.

You find out how grateful you are for a parent when he quite quickly dies of cancer. You discover how much your health and vitality mean to you when they are snatched away and then restored. You understand how important the daily work of your hands and your heart is, when your life takes a completely new turn, when you realize you must do the thing God has placed on your heart, or your soul will shrivel.

Time here on earth is finite, and I don't want to waste it on unnecessary email, extravagant clothes, or even well-prepared meals. Any of these things can be fine, if they are not a distraction from the bigger thing: Jesus came with a mission of love to save me out of my self-addiction. He did this precisely so that I might know his love and inhabit it. So I can own the privilege of sharing His love with others daily.

Ephesians 5:16 is that famous Bible verse that talks about "redeeming the time." One of my favorite music artists, Chris Rice, may have illustrated this point most clearly in his song "Tick-Tock":

Got our heels dug in
But time is draggin' us toward
The time when time won't matter anymore
They say life is but a vapor
Just a blip on a radar screen
Not the dates on your tombstone
But the dash in between
There's just today, that's all we got
There's just today, that's all we got

Tick-tock, the past is locked
The future's far away
You can't go back, you can't hurry it up
You gotta learn to live today
Tick-tock, it's now o'clock
The little hand is ours
The second hand sweeps us around
And the Big Hand has the power
The Big Hand has the power

Well am I livin' or am I dyin'
Will the world get another day?
I hear a baby cryin', and I pluck out another gray
I'm always talkin' about a change
But talkin's all I've done
I'm gonna start tomorrow
But tomorrow never comes
There's just today, that's all we got
There's just today, that's all we got

Funny, as I pasted these lyrics in, I began to hear the tick-tock of the wall clock in our kitchen. A reminder that I must get up off this couch and start redeeming some time. 

Cheers...