19th May 2006

Born again is one thing, just being born is pretty great too!
By John Fischer

My birthday flew by this week and I think I've finally figured out what to celebrate about birthdays, and the less numbers have to do with it, the better. Your actual age on your birthday is only an issue when you can name it in single digits. After that, with the exception of passing certain ages that qualify you for driving, voting, drinking, and fighting in wars, the numbers just don't matter. What should matter is not how many years it has been since you were born, but the fact that you were born, period. Yes, that's a pretty big deal. Your birth was meant to happen. Regardless of what your life has been like up until now, you were meant to be, and your existence is something to celebrate, on any day for that matter, but especially on birthdays. Your birthday is the day it all started for you.

I remember well the moment this insight came home to me. I was a grown man with a wife and kids and a mortgage, but I rushed out of a psychologist's office and picked up the first phone I could find to call my wife and announce to her the good news - that God wanted me to be born, and that was a big deal! You would think I could have waited until I was home to tell her such obvious news, but I couldn't. You see, I had heard so much, from my childhood on, about being born again that I never truly realized how important it was to be born the first time. I also noticed right away how this new understanding changed how I saw everyone else. It was everything I could do, coming out of counseling that day, to keep from rushing up and hugging the first person I saw. Up until then, I had taken on the somewhat cultish belief that you had to have had a second birth in order to count as a human being. That's what made this news so earth-shattering to me. One birth is good enough to mark. Are you breathing? Let's celebrate! God wanted you to be born! He wanted me alive; that must mean he wants you alive too!

Jesus wants us to be alive with him in Heaven for eternity, as well, and that's where the second birth comes in. But the first one is no less significant. The first one is why he went to all the trouble he went through to save us in the first place and to make the second one possible. And that's no accident.