Happy Birthday to You

Do we need to celebrate our birthdays?  If so we should also look into the Bible and consider our friends who were there before us.  These friends of ours are the prophets.  They were born like ourselves.  They had mothers and fathers. They had high expectations in their lives that things could go well.  But that was not the way of God.  Most of the prophets faced a hard and terrible life. Some wished they had been still born, or that their conception had not taken place.  But that was not the way of God.  God wanted them to be born and face the reality of life and do His work, He wanted them to live, and in much suffering they thought of their birthday. 

To be born and live a happy life is something we all would have wanted.  Most of us are born and live in tribulation, Job 5:6-7; “Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”  These problems are of various kinds – most of anxiety.  We were told by our Lord Jesus Christ that we should not be anxious, but nature being what it is we fail to follow the advice we do not know what will happen between now and the hours to come.  Our Lord Jesus Christ knew very well that a human being is always anxious of life, hence he gave the advice.

We need to be faithful and believe in order for us to be saved and it is a need that we be in the Kingdom of God.  We try ourselves to be worthy of the Kingdom. But this comes about because we were born and we are living.  But what about our birth day?  Do we celebrate when we were born? And by the way, who celebrated on that day?  Jer. 20:14; Job 3; Jer.15:10; Job 10:18-22;; Psalm 39:13; Psalm 88:12-18; Isaiah 38:18.  By reading these chapters we will decide whether to celebrate or not.  Our Lord Jesus Christ told us to remember his death, he considered his death more important than his birth.  1 Cor.11:23-27; 1 Cor. 15:3-4; Matt.26:26-28.

Bro. A.D. Liwawa (Neno, Malawi)