I am quickly approaching my 50th birthday. I know many people that hate having their 30th, 40th or 50th birthdays. I assume this is because they fear or dread growing older. Our own mortality is made all the more clear when we go from 39 to 40 or from 49 to 50.
I have never had a fear of starting the next decade. When (if) I turn fifty in three months it will mean that I am still alive and kicking. It will mean that I did not die at 49 years of age, just as I did not die at 39 or 38. I would like to live a long healthy life (doesn’t everyone) but I know that someday I will die. It is a strange thing to think about. All I have ever known is living and yet I know that at 50 years of age the odds are pretty good that I have lived well over half of my life. This is true even if I live to be a very old man.
I love life. I love this gift that God has given me. I exist because God made it so. I did not have to have a life; I could have very easily never come into being at all. Every breath I take, even the ones filled with pain and sorrow are gifts from God. I live a comfortable, middleclass American life. In this status, I am for better off, with creature comforts than the large majority of people in the world today and if we look at history, I live better than 99.99999 percent of all the people ever born.
I am blessed beyond measure and it is a gift that I do not deserve and could not have earned. I could have been born on a dirt floor in a jungle or slum. But I was not. All that I have is a gift. If I die today I will have lived a remarkably charmed and blessed life.
Of course I hope to live another several decades, but if I don’t I have nothing to complain about. I have been, until now most blessed of God and He has seen fit to bring me into a relationship with Himself through His son, Jesus Christ, our Emmanuel.
Coram Deo,
Kenith
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