Birthdays

I celebrated my birthday this week. Spring is perched on the windowsill, peeping in under the early morning blind, and pulling me outside to pick early peas - sweet, snap and snow. Winter lassitude is lifting and I'm hoping winter grumpiness will follow.

Spring reminds me of reading this reflection on consciousness and being born again. I am drawn to the idea that as we grow in new understandings, as our fellowship with and delight in God grows it is an experience of new birth. It is like the freshness of God's mercy each day. It is the memory of new steps in faith, or times of deeply knowing God's faithfulness, that I look back on like birthdays.

The circling journey of years is a way of reminding us of where we have come from. Of course, there are joyful and sorrowful reminders, but both are enriched by presence of God-with-us. And somehow, each time we pass that memory milestone it is indelibly marked by the new visits as well as the old.

I don't pretend to understand God and why he has made as he has made. But sometimes his wisdom is so apparent, when we can see its fruit in encouraging us.