Birthday

Warren Black 7-11-2016

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"Trust the deepest intuitions of your own heart, trust the source of your own truest gladness, trust the road, trust him. And praise him too. Praise him for all we leave behind us in our traveling. Praise him for all we lose that lightens our feet, for all that the long road of the years bears off like a river. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. But praise him too for the knowledge that what’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and that all the dark there ever was, set next to the light, would scarcely fill a cup."

Joe Kay 10-02-2014
06photo / Shutterstock.com

'At some point, we have to get up and get on with making something out of the day.' 06photo / Shutterstock.com

I had a birthday over the weekend, and I was reminded of a funeral joke. (OK, so this is a little weird, but hang with me for a moment.) Here’s the joke:

Three older guys are talking about what they would like the minister to say at their funerals.

“Well,“ says the first man, “I hope the minister stands in front of my casket and tells everyone that I was a good man who loved his family.”

The second man says: “I hope the minister stands in front of my casket and tells everyone that I tried to inspire others with my life.”

The third man thinks for a moment.

“I hope the minister stands in front of my casket and says, ‘Wait, look! He’s still moving!’”

Yeah, bad joke. But it touches on something important nonetheless.

We need to keep moving.

Jim Wallis 6-10-2014
Birthday cake icon, Super3D / Shutterstock.com

Birthday cake icon, Super3D / Shutterstock.com

Last week, I celebrated my birthday. This annual occurrence has taken on new meaning in light of what happened last year around the same time. I had major surgery for prostate cancer. The diagnosis was quite unexpected, with absolutely no signs or symptoms beforehand. But my health provider, Kaiser Permanente, caught it in time and the doctors at the National Institutes of Health performed a very successful operation that removed all of the cancer. So far, regular tests have shown there is no more cancer in my body and for that, our family is very grateful.

Gratitude is the right word and the deepest feeling I had while celebrating my birthday, one year after the cancer surgery. The emotion of that gratitude went even deeper when we lost one of my dearest friends, Christian ethics professor Glen Stassen, just a few weeks ago — to prostate cancer that spread outside of his prostate. They didn’t catch Glen’s cancer in time.

I vividly remember my response after the surgery last year — a new recognition of how fragile and utterly precious life is and especially how utterly priceless your closest relationships are — the ones you love most in the world. For me that’s my wife Joy, and my sons Luke and Jack. My larger family got included in that too, my dearest friends where I live and work, and around the world, my extended community.

I resolved to operate every day with that recognition of how precious my life and relationships are to me. 

Christian Piatt 10-08-2012

So yeah, it’s my birthday, and that really doesn’t have anything to do with church signs. But hey, I gotta call it something, right???

Jim Wallis 11-07-2011

Billy Graham has always been a life-long learner, passionate about preaching the gospel but always ready to understand more about what that gospel means in the world. It was never surprising to me that this southern born and raised American evangelist decided early on to insist on preaching only to racially integrated coliseums and crusades, when many others just went along with their culture. Later, as a result of falling in love with the new congregations we was preaching too in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, had a "change of heart" on the nuclear arms race-which we featured in a cover interview with the evangelist in Sojourners magazine. Billy Graham has also been willing to admit his mistakes and grew from them, which is something all of us as "leaders" need to constantly learn from. And while a conservative evangelical all his life, Graham was never drawn to the hard edged and politicized fundamentalism of the "Religious Right" but instead often winced at them.

Rose Marie Berger 1-01-2010

Once upon a time, a long time ago, unto us a savior was born. Sadly, his mom never threw him a birthday party. But now you can.