A reflection on my father’s birthday

Today is my father’s birthday. Like today, he was born on a Friday the thirteenth. He would have turned 101 today.

However, he lived barely half that long, dying in 1979 of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five.

Each year, his birthday gives me pause. It is an inexpressible thing to have outlived my father now by twelve years. I will always remember him as being thirty-four years older than me, which was the case when he died. People I know who are the age he was when he died now seem young to me, but he seems old and always will.

Thinking about time

Time is one of the true mysteries of our world. We live in what scientists call a “space-time continuum,” but this is not the reality we think it to be.

We in the West have been conditioned since the ancient Greeks to view time in a linear fashion, with the past behind us and the future yet before us. But this is a fiction. Neither “yesterday” nor “tomorrow” actually exists. Neither has what philosophers call “ontological status.”

“Yesterday” is but a memory, and “tomorrow” is but a hope (or a fear).

Not even this “day” actually exists, just this moment. In a sense, we live in the ever-present “now.” The future is promised to none of us; no one in the Bible received a five-year plan.

Nor can we create, conserve, or destroy time. For all our technological sophistication, we cannot make the sun rise or tomorrow arrive. Nor can we stop them. We have no ability to slow time so as to conserve it. Each moment is a gift from the Creator who stands above time in eternity.

When the director walks onto the stage

And yet, being good stewards of time is essential to good stewardship. As Annie Dillard reminds us, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

We are therefore taught by Scripture to plan for a future we cannot create. Jesus warned us about a man who “began to build and was not able to finish” and a king who did not prepare for battle before it came (Luke 14:30–32). We must prepare for eternity before it comes, since it will be too late once it arrives.

As CS Lewis noted, when the director walks onto the stage, the play is over.

But while we are to plan for the future, we are not to presume on it. God’s word is clear:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:13–14).

Tragedies such as yesterday’s plane crash in India remind us daily of our frailty, finitude, and mortality.

So, what’s the balance between planning and presumption?

James continues: “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (v. 15). We are to plan for tomorrow while never forgetting that we could meet God today. One day, if the Lord tarries long enough, we will. 

Therefore, we are to trust God to redeem all he allows, including a future only he can see. And we are to give him our best in the meantime, our utmost for his highest: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

As St. Augustine noted, we are to pray as if everything depends on God, then work as if everything depends on us. As we work, God works.

“The power at work within us”

Across this week following Pentecost, I have been focusing in my Daily Articles on the agency of the Spirit in our lives. Once again I find this theme essential to the present conversation.

Paul prayed,

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever (Ephesians 3:20–21, my emphasis).

The indwelling Spirit can empower and equip us to “make the most of every opportunity” (Ephesians 5:16 NLT). Because he sees tomorrow better than we can see today, he can prepare us for an unseen future while using us in the visible present.

The key is admitting our need for his help and then yielding to him (Ephesians 5:18), being so “poor in spirit” that we depend on the power of the Spirit (Matthew 5:3).

Here is where my reflection on my father’s birthday becomes especially relevant for me. I am personally grateful for this day 101 years ago, without which I would obviously not be writing these words today. But from the moment of his birth, his death was certain (unless the Lord returned first). And today he can help me only by his memory and the lessons he taught me.

My timeless heavenly Father, by contrast, stands ready to redeem every moment I entrust to his providence. His Spirit stands ready to answer his Son’s prayers on my behalf (Romans 8:34) by leading me into my best life for his greatest glory and our greatest good.

“Seek thou this soul of mine”

To this end, I pray every day these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer:

To my humble supplication

Lord, give ear and acceptation.

Save thy servant, that hath none

Help nor hope but thee alone.

And I trust that the Spirit who gave my father life and gave me life will be the “help” and “hope” I need to maximize his memory and my ministry.

Just today, I found this fifteenth-century prayer by the Italian poet Bianco da Siena:

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,

And visit it with thine own ardor glowing.

O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,

And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, ‘til earthly passions turn

To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

And let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,

And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Amen?