In just a very few days, I will be having a birthday! Especially neat is the fact that my Mother and my oldest Son share the same birth-date with me; Happy Birthday Mom and Ry! What is truly incredible to me is that I will actually be “The Double Nickle”; 55 years old! When did that happen? How did that happen? I didn’t see that coming! Where did the years, all those years, go? Well it is true! I am really going to be 55; and in such a youth crazed culture in which we find ourselves I need some biblical perspective on it. A favorite writer of mine, James Russell Miller who lived 1840-1912, supplied it for me so I thought that I would share it with all of my blog reading friends!

     By the way no presents please, just pray for me that, Lord willing, the “growth” described below will be true of my 55th year on earth.

Soli Deo Gloria 

OUR BIRTHDAYS!

J. R. Miller, “The Beauty of Every Day” 1910

     Some people come to birthdays regretfully. They do not like to think that they are growing older. But there is no reason for regret, if only we are living our years as we should live them, as we may live them. Empty years are a dishonor. Years filled with sin are blots in the calendar. We should be ashamed to come to a birthday at the close of a year of idleness, indolence, neglect, or unfaithfulness. Jesus said we must give account for every idle word we speak. It will be an unhappy reckoning that we must make, after an idle year, or for idle hours and days in a year.

     But there need never be a shadow of regret in coming to a birthday, when we have lived our best through all the days. If we go through a year walking with God we shall come to its close with enlarged life, with nobler character, with richer virtues in every way a more godly man or woman.

     Growth is a law of life. When growth ceases, death is beginning. God counts our age, not by our birthdays, but by the advances which His eye sees in our inner life. Growth, too, is not marked by height or weight or by accumulations of money or property or earthly honor, but by an increase in godly character.

Categories: Christian Living