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“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln

 Today I turned 49.  Such a nondescript year, the penultimate year before the big 5-0. This year at one level means just one more day on the calendar. But I believe birthdays give us all a time to reflect just a little bit.

I share a birthday with several students and friends, along with athletes Lyle Alzado and Jack Del Rio, actors Amanda Bynes ( man I love to watch What a Girl Wants with Hannah) and Alec Baldwin, King Henry IV and Philip III, primate researcher Jane Goodall (watch what you are thinking lol), musicians Mick Mars (guitarist for Motley Crue), and comedian Eddie Murphy.  Whatever.

 

I am thankful for another year.  I have as much passion for Jesus, my family, and ministry as I ever have. I confess that some days I do not have the physical, emotional, or even spiritual energy I once had. I have to pace myself more.  I need to eat better and exercise more consistently.  I lose my cool easier and get aggravated with myself more it seems.  But God continues to take a lump of clay (larger than it should be) like me and get some use for His glory.

 

Thanks to all who have demonstrated the love of God to me. The many Facebook birthday wishes, the cards from students, the gifts from family (Hannah gave me Alvin and the Chipmunks last night and I watched it with her and Michelle—it really is cute), all these bless me so. I got an email from Calcutta, India, and a card from my parents, and anticipate the special cake Michelle bakes for me.  Now if only UNC were to win the National Championship it would be a great birthday season indeed!

 

Birthdays are a reminder.  They remind us, among other things, that:

–Life is short, use time wisely. “Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst.”  ~Willaim Penn

–We cannot control much in life, but we have great control over how we spend so much of our time.  As Carl Sandberg wrote, “Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

–We should spend our time doing that which is memorable, that which is less temporal and more eternal in its impact. After all, this life is a vapor compared to eternity.  “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”  ~Louis Hector Berlioz

–We should avoid the tendency toward workaholism, but we should also be very wary of laziness which plagues so many today: “If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.” ~Elbert Hubbard

–We should see time more through the lenses of the relationships we build than the possessions we own.

–Time has far greater value than money. We can make more money, but when time has passed we cannot recover it.  “Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time!”  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

So today I will try to spend the day wisely. To breathe in the fresh air of the wonder of salvation. To delight in the wife of my youth, and to relish the children I so love.  I will think much of the students God has allowed me to know, and the great shadow they have cast on my life.  I will seek wisdom more and attention less, and hope to be one on whom the Lord will one day bestow those words, “Well, done.”

”Time is an equal opportunity employer.  Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day.  Rich people can’t buy more hours.  Scientists can’t invent new minutes.  And you can’t save time to spend it on another day.  Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving.  No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”  ~Denis Waitely

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 8:03 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.