Skip to main content

My Birthday

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my birthday. Here's how...

I woke up sore. Very sore. As I went to get up, every muscle in my body screamed at me in laughter as if to say, 'What, are you kidding me? You're getting up? Now? At all?'

Are those my hips creaking? My feet are yelling at me. My body feels....really...old! Is this the beginning of the end? Will I ever want to get up again? If this is what the down hill feels like, then I don't like it. How is this happy?

That is how I felt on my birthday.

Then I remembered that I had been walking around Disney World for two days straight while carrying a 40-pound weight, also known as my 4-year old daughter.

Sometimes our immediate pain causes us to forget our true identity. I'm 36. I'm still young. I'm in reasonably good shape. But my suffering (if the effects of a great Disney trip can be called suffering) caused me to forget my true identity.

The truth is that we are not what we experience. We can allow those experiences to shape our identity. But we don't have to. Life, and the suffering that sometimes comes with it, is just life. Our identity has been created and hidden with God.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:3-4).
There are many other scriptures that will point towards the same truth, but this is one of my favorites. Paul has been discussing our actions as Christians, but always within the context of Christ living in us. In this verse, he nails it clearly when he identifies Christ as our life. Guess what? This life, our life even, is not about us.

But there's another good reason why we should not identify ourselves by suffering we experience. It's in another letter of Paul's.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).
Yeah, all that walking made me feel like I was wasting away. But if life isn't about me, it's even less about this body God has given me.

Since the vacation ended, my body has recovered, although a lack of exercise for 2 weeks has proven not to have been a great choice. But even this will not identify me. My life is hidden with Christ. The End.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accountable

I recently officiated a wedding. The ceremony was simple, lovely, and ended with another couple professing to keep the covenant of marriage. But it all started with a clarification...from me. At our first premarital counseling session, as I have done with every couple I have agreed to marry, I clarified a couple of matters. First, I officiate Christian weddings, where both spouses-to-be are professing Christians. I firmly believe that marriage is difficult enough, without adding disagreements about God into the mix. Second, as a minister of Jesus Christ, I believe the pastor’s role in a wedding is to represent the blessing of God on that union. So we have several sessions of premarital counseling where we discuss married life. It’s not that I have this imaginary card in my head, with a picture of me on the front and my stats on the back. (You know, like a baseball card.) Ok, I do picture cards. Pastor cards! And being a competitive guy, I want my stats to look good. The number of coupl
Post a Comment
Read more

Patience

I am more than halfway through the last year of dropping one of my children off at school. It's my eighth grade daughter, for anyone keeping track of my family.  See, next year she will be at the high school, and her brother will drive her. He says that it's not cool for seniors to drive their freshman sister to school, but I bet it's cooler than being dropped off by your mom in a minivan.  So rather than groan about this daily responsibility, I've been reminiscing about what the drop-off line used to look like, way back in elementary school. Once our children were about halfway through their elementary years, the drop-off line became a test of patience.  Do you know which group you do not want to get caught behind in the parent drop-off line at an elementary school? The kindergartners. These little ones are barely able to walk, but now we put them in the high-pressure situation of trying to unbuckle their seat-belt, grab their backpack (which might be as tall as they a
Post a Comment
Read more

Jury Duty

I was recently summoned to jury duty. I know, groan. Except I didn't. I had never experienced it before and was curious to see what it was like.   When the day to report arrives, they separate you into groups, asking various questions to decide if you will be selected to serve. Do you know the accused? Do you have conflicts that would keep you from serving? Can you stay focused?  I wanted to answer well, if only because my kids kept wishing me luck the day before, telling me they hoped I made the team. After all, who wants to be rejected? It occurred to me that there are things you probably shouldn’t say right away if you’re wanting to serve on a jury. I know, I know, people don’t typically want to serve on a jury. But that list didn’t seem nearly as humorous to me. Here are the things you probably shouldn’t say if you want to be selected for jury. I hold myself in contempt. You can’t handle the truth. We find the defendant guilty. I believe the judge looks pretty in his robe. I’d
Post a Comment
Read more