April 12 A God Who Rescues and Celebrating a Birthday

II Samuel 14:14 Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.

Our sin must separate us from God, forever banished from His presence, save for His love. God Himself pursued us, redeemed us, then pursued us so that we would hear and understand the gospel. In deed, He devised a way that we would no longer be estranged, but we would be drawn into the circle of the beloved.

I think about the word "estranged," meaning separated. There are people in our life circles with whom we are not estranged, but neither do we have a relationship. Perhaps you can think of a distant relative, a someone you know you are related to but with whom you have no dealings or even real feelings for. You are not estranged or separated from them because you never were really close with them.

In salvation, God has done more than just allowing us into the family. He loves us. We matter to Him. He has a purpose for our lives, and He has fitted us to that purpose. He longs for us to experience love and joy and peace and patience, among other things, and He has given us a way to live joyful, peaceful, love-filled lives...because we are more than just not-estranged. We are loved and pursued, like a bride.

As we drove away from being pronounced husband and wife, I was so happy I could not contain it. My beloved had pledged himself to me, and I to him. As amazing as all of that was that day, it was the pledge of two faulty people, loving each other with a human love, an imperfect love that would be experienced and given in fits and starts as we learned what love meant.

But God has pledged Himself to us, to love us with a perfect flawless love in the context of knowing exactly what we need, and being able to provide it. When a couple is married, when they are pronounced husband and wife, there is applause, a public celebration of this loving commitment. I think today about our celebrations as Christians, how few and faulty.

We celebrate the birth of a child, the birthday, the graduation and the wedding, perhaps the engagement. But we don't celebrate annually that second birth, the removal of banishment and estrangement. Perhaps we should, individually, as families, corporately as a body of believers.

I never thought of this as a mother, of celebrating the salvation or baptism of my children, or even grandchildren. Until this very morning. I wonder if we would have fewer young people or even older people wander from the faith if we celebrated their new birth annually, reminding them and ourselves of the miracle of the new life....just wondering.