Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Wera Gayle Brown Daniel Forever Forty-Nine

Our last Christmas together at Snow Lake 2008. Riding to Holly Springs in her red mustang with the top down just cause. +B+B+

LABOR DAY BIRTHDAYS

Today, my sister is celebrating her first birthday in Heaven with Jesus. She has been there for one full year. She left us on Labor Day 2009. Certainly, for the rest of the Labor Day holidays of my life on Earth, I will be remembering her home going, always celebrating for her and hopefully mourning less and less with those of us who miss her desperately down here.

I used to tell folks that I have two birthdays to celebrate every year: the day of my actual (thank you, mama, for my first) birth and the day of my spiritual (thank you, Jesus, for my born again) rebirth into the family of God. I’m not sure why it has just dawned on me that believers get to celebrate three birthdays! Now, answer me this: who wouldn’t want to have THREE birthdays?

All that said, I am coming to appreciate with great assurance that the day of my departure from this world launches (births!) me into my first day in Heaven. Now that thought is surely comfort and fuel for this journey. Truthfully, on that day, we will enter a place where time matters not at all. We will be in the very presence of the One Who exists outside of time. Clocks and calendars and days and hours and moments won’t matter at all as we drop our Timex and cross the dateline of eternity.

Meanwhile…it’s labor day. You and I have work to do. In John chapter nine, Jesus was about to heal the eyes of a man born blind. In that context, He said, “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Shortly after speaking those words, Jesus turned the lights on by healing the eyes of this man who had never seen a sunrise. The amazing message in that quote “…as long as I am in the world…” hits me right between the eyes of my heart. Jesus came and lived and died and was raised and is now seated at the right hand of His Father in Heaven. I think that means that you and I are presently the lights He has left for the dark world. Jesus left a light on for lost people and we are the bulbs. We are the candles. We are offering second and third birthday candles to the one birthday people. We get to share with them that they can expect TWO more birthdays to celebrate. My sister would be grinning right now. Her candles burned out down here, but they are shining brightly up there. I feel that smile. On my third-birthing-day, I will see it.
+B+B+
Becky Brown
www.littlebrownlight.com