Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday! Although the chances are small that today actually is YOUR birthday, I can assure you that sometime within the next year you will hear that very thing said to you.

I think we will some day hear yet another phrase that may go something like, Happy Great Decision Day! Birthdays or Great Decision Days or the “day” you were Born Again will then conjure up memories of years gone by and the person you used to be as an infant or child or youth or before you made your Great Decision or Great Conversion. It may also remind you of an era gone by—the activities, the places, other people who were involved in your earlier, less developed life. And we will be grateful we moved beyond some of these things--that we've grown up.

It is part of my Faith that I believe that God can see backward as well as forward as well as now, and that we can become like God, if we do the right things. I believe that this kind of 'evolution' is a true principle.

That is to say, we can be blessed with capabilities far beyond that which we now possess. Then theoretically we can recapture those earlier days and review them much as we can now review a film or an audiotape. We will be able to “see” what were competing options or, perhaps, “oppositions” that may have kept us back for a time, or retarded our progress, or persuaded us to go one way or the other. We will be able then to see the temptations overcome, the growth accomplished, the help we were receiving, unaware probably, from angels or those on the “other side.” I think, in addition, we will be more aware of the help offered which we accepted or rejected from the living who deeply cared about us on this side and the pivotal decisions we made. The contrast may then astonish us as we see how far we have come. Yes, these are the kinds of things I think about when I think of birthdays.

And so we see that the gift of life can be and should be celebrated every day as you will on your birthday. God wants our lives to be good. Our parents wanted(s) it to be good for us; our friends should want it for us. For in the end, God greatly desires that we have, or eventually come to, a state of “joy.” That, too, is my wish for you. I hope your Birthday or day of Great Decision is one of celebration.