REFLECTIONS

Birthdays, Seasons, and Aging

The birthday came much like any other day. It was special to us and to our family and to others that shared the birth date, but otherwise the day was rather ordinary. Even if a special milestone had been reached there would have been no real sense of growing older or wiser or taller or wider. Birthdays can feel just like any other date on the calendar. Morning brings a touch of daylight, noontime produces its usual appetite, evening shade marks the end the workday, and falling darkness begins preparation for bedtime and tomorrow.

Seasons are like that too. They are marked on the calendar four times each year, but the designated day usually feels much the same as the one before or the one after. The date for winter does not usually produce the first cold front, trees do not burst forth with fresh leaves on the first day of spring, warm days often precede the timetable that summer arrives, and the colors of autumn seldom emerge on the first day attributed to their brilliance. Yet seasons come even if the days that mark the birth of them sneak by unobserved.

With every birthday celebration, passing season, or emerging flicker of grey, the day of the Lord moves ever closer. The prophetic signs of His coming are evident in the lives of suffering people, in natural disasters that ravage the earth, and in wars waged over spiritual differences. But even days of peril come with such regularity that we give them little more note than the brisk air on a winter morning.

Birthdays, seasons, and aging are as ordinary as night overcoming day. They are as common as the movement of a gentle breeze. But we know that someday we will awaken to an ordinary day that will not turn out ordinary at all. It will be the day of the Lord.

And nothing about it will sneak by unnoticed.

“You are the light of the world.”

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org

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