Birthdays

What's the big deal about a birthday? It only marks the anniversary of when an already living, thinking person, with physical senses and emotions, moved a few inches through a birth canal. In my view, it would make more sense to celebrate the day of conception, except that that date is rarely known. Not to mention the awkward, premature conversations with little ones such commemorations would lead to.

As I ponder the entirely uncelebratory passing of the twenty-seventh anniversary of my conversion to Christianity yesterday, I feel kinda deprived, like most people would if their birthdays were unnoticed. But God noticed. As my Heavenly Father, He's the one who gave me my new birth (John 3:3). Hmmm...I wonder if there was a "spiritual birthday" party in Heaven for me?

D-Day: Armies That Liberate, Not Conquer

On this sixty-third anniversary of D-Day, I would like to teach my younger readers a little about the tremendous significance of the event, and for the rest of us, to relate it to a modern struggle. It was the greatest amphibious assault in history, with tens of thousands of our finest boys storming the beaches of Normandy, running toward the hills that were raining down cannon and machine gun fire upon them. The Nazis had conquered almost all of Europe, but the Allies were trying to get a foothold there in the north of France. Was this massive force invading to conquer? No, they were fighting to free a conquered people. Many thousands gave their lives so that others might be free.

There is a conqueror today who is more vile and more ambitious than Adolf Hitler. Osama Bin Laden may be that, but I'm referring to Satan. God has sent His army--the Church--into all the Earth to fight for the lives of those trodden under by satanic deception and their own sin. We do not fight to conquer, but to liberate. Our weapons are prayer, faith, love, and God's word. Let us remember the courage of the D-Day vets as we also live our lives--and perhaps give our lives--for the cause of this Gospel.