“…I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body…” Psalm 139:15-16
Waking up today after a hard day of labor yesterday, I wasn’t EXPECTING anything. Which, come to think about it, is a gift in itself. But my wife presented me with a ‘present’ she hadn’t planned and one I certainly wasn’t expecting. She blurted out…”Today is April 17th!” All I could say was…”Yea??? And???” She said, “today is the day our first child was expected to be born!”
It was just like that! Shocking at first…unexpected… and then pondering, remembering, wondering and then…thanksgiving! Today, I was reminded I have a child I’ve never had the joy of holding, raising or knowing. I thought about him in light of what I KNOW about God…MY Father. Because I KNOW…he’s there…WITH Him. And someday I will meet them BOTH.. face to face.
I say ‘him’ because we think he would have been a boy. And he is not alone. We experienced the sorrow of 3 miscarriages among our 4 WONDERFUL children. If you ask us how many kids we have, we say 4. But in the REALITY of HEAVEN, we have 7! The gift of today was to simply smile DEEP within my being, and rejoice in both remembrance AND in anticipation of a GREAT family reunion in Heaven.
If heaven and eternity were to be represented by the oceans of the earth, this life isn’t even a droplet! But what we do, believe, choose and become is the ‘seed’ by which our eternal existence blooms. Jesus came here as an embryo, grew, died and rose again to give dead people ETERNAL and ABUNDANT LIFE. Both here AND in heaven WITH Him. And if you KNOW HIM as your Savior and Lord, and you read and KNOW His Word, there are wonders awaiting we can never even comprehend.
Psalm 139 is about being planned, created and formed for birth, even BEFORE embryo stage. And if you know God like I know God, It can be a WONDERFUL and JOYFUL experience to simply contemplate Who He is… and what life will be like WHEN I am united with Him in Glory. Try THAT when your feeling gloomy!
So call us crazy… but today we are celebrating a birthday for someone we have never even met. But just like we KNOW that our Savior Jesus Christ lives, so we KNOW our unborn child lives as well. And we KNOW that THEY are both OURS! Oh what a Joy it will be to meet and hug them both!
Happy birthday son! And… thanks for the gift of a smile.
