Happy Birthday, Aaron!

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. (Job 1:1-5 ESV). Today is my youngest son’s 29th birthday. Happy birthday, Aaron! And, I know it must seem odd indeed that I would draw your attention to the Book of Job as a part of the celebration of his birth. However, I think you will see it does make a very important principle very plain. I love birthdays. We have done our best to make sure all of the members of our family know and feel very special on their birthday. Whenever the “birthday boy” is home we like to have some special meal and celebration. Of course that means they get to determine the menu. And, as a part of the decoration of the table we like to place their brightly wrapped gifts near their place. The culmination of the meal is typically a birthday cake or cookie (giant sized of course). Somewhere along the line Faith and Logan decided to make it a tradition to put the “number candles” on the cake and blow them out. I can tell you that in my case there has always been a little trepidation approaching bigger numbers each year. So you can see why I love birthdays. There are full of joy and tradition. Birthdays are not prominently featured in the Bible. There are stories of births, to be sure, but only three references to birthdays and two of those are quite grim. Pharaoh hanged his chief baker on his birthday, just as Joseph had predicted (Genesis 40:16-23). Herod celebrated his birthday by beheading John the Baptist (Matthew 14:6-10). Both of these don’t give us much help in how to celebrate! So thank goodness for Job’s family, who apparently celebrated birthdays with gusto. Their birthday parties sound almost like ones we like in our family. Birthdays are worth celebrating, it seems to me, not only as a celebration of an individual’s life, but also as a celebration of the God who created each of us. Because each life is a miracle, birthdays are times to offer twin exclamations, both, “Happy birthday!” and, “Praise God!” I certainly am going to deliver both those messages today!