Happy Birthday, Marie Therese

Happy Birthday.  This the traditional greeting.  Marie Therese, the future Queen of France (admittedly for less than an hour) was born on this day in 1778 to her mother Marie Antoinette and father Louis XVI.  And on the face of it, she was born into great happiness at the Palace of Versailles. 

It was not, however, a happy birth day.  In point of fact, it was a matter of miraculous wonder that she lived to day two.   For hours she struggled to live after a most traumatic birth - a birth so dreadful that from then on the king refused to allow people to be present when his children were born.

And as French politics turned out, it was also a matter of wonder that she lived a life that ended in a natural death, something that most of her family were denied. She was sentenced to death in the French Revolution, but this was moderated to permanent exile.

In this season when we  remember a King born and placed in a manger it is worth remembering that birth into a palace is no guarantee of a happy life - as others have found.

Happy Birthday CHS!

I describe London Baptist preacher C H Spurgeon as my ministry hero:

 

Perhaps, with due deference on his birthday, we should note how unheroically he would wish to be regarded.  Even if he is sometimes followed as an evangelical demi-god he certainly did not experience himself that way,

“It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, ‘How will the work go on without me?’ As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, ‘How will the mails be carried without me?’ Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.”

Charles H. Spurgeon, “Laid Aside, Why?,” The Sword and Trowel, May, 1876, London

Happy Birthday Kim!

Kim Walker-Smith is 39 today.  Happy Birthday, Kim!  If this was the only worship she had sung we would be grateful for her, her voice and her Lord.

Happy Birthday Pratibha!

Today is Pratibha Patil's birthday.

Pratibha was India's President and to date the only woman to have held that office.

As our Parliament - of which we are supposed to be so proud - mires itself ever more deeply in the swampy jungle of Brexit two of her comments (about the Parliament of India) are poignant, to say the least:

It is important that the decorum and dignity of the House is upheld at all times.  The image of Parliament in the public mind should be one where proceedings, debates and discussions take place with a view to resolve issues through a constructive and co-operative approach.

Parliament of the country is the repository of the sovereign will of the people and its successful functioning is the responsibility of both the Government and Opposition.

Quite.

Happy Birthday, Maurice White

Maurice White, founding father and general genius of Earth, Wind and Fire (EWF) would have been celebrating his 75th birthday today.  Sadly for his loved ones and many fans he died back in February. 

EWF formed part of my musical growing up background.  I was never a huge fan mainly, I think, because I was not into the relentless Californian feel-goodness that characterised their undoubtedly skillful music.     

This feel-good song is the more remarkable because its subject matter is the opposite - 

Somethin' happened along the way
Yesterday was all we had
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be happy is sad
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be was all we had

Perhaps on a birthday it is worth thinking about that Love which cannot die, does not die, the Love that is stronger than death.  The advantage of a birthday near Christmas is that such a Love is relatively easy to locate.

If you look in the hay.

Happy Birthday WA!

You may be accustomed to this blog's tradition of celebrating birthdays on this date. As well as Horatius Bonar and Edith Piaf, today is the birthday of W.A. Criswell.  W.A. was the first Pastor I worked with when I left Spurgeon's College and moved to Dallas, Texas and as long as my memory lasts it will be my privilege and joy to recall working with him.

 

W.A. occupied a place of influence far beyond that of any British Baptist other than C H Spurgeon but to meet the man week by week, on a corridor or a catfish restaurant or his somewhat palatial church house was to realise that, for all his reputation in American and Texan politics, in Southern Baptist controversies and in fund raising on a mind-boggling scale here was a man whose greatest excitement was seeing, one by one, ordinary people come from the darkness of sin into the light of Christ's salvation. 

 

It is amazing how many lesser men I have met before and since, especially on this island and in its religion, who have nowhere near as huge a story but nonetheless have somehow managed to lose the plot.

 

 

You can listen to one of his Christmas Sermons here.



Happy Birthday Edith



Today we celebrate various birthdays - including Edith Piaf's.

Edith, short on height (several inches short of five foot) but with an amazing voice, was plucked to fame from the back streets of Paris.

Born during the First World War, she was famed before the Second.  Edith was not noted for her Christian devotion (to the extent that the Catholic Archbishop refused to take her funeral in 1963).  She died at 47 years after a depressingly (literally and metaphorically) familiar story of broken relationships and addictions brought to an early conclusion by a liver that could take no more.

On the plus side, in this famously iconic song Non, je ne regrette rien she hit on the Gospel (admittedly accidentally).

. . . No I regret nothing
It's paid for, wiped away, forgotten . . .
. . . swept away my love stories
And their troubles
Swept away for good
I'll start again from zero . . .

Ah, Edith. 

Your liver was lost but your soul did not need to be.  This is the Christmas joy - Year Zero, a unique opportunity for the human race to start again, no longer in the line of Adam (or the apes - for the benefit of Mr Dawkins) but in the Last Adam, Jesus.  Every life can have no regrets, its debts paid in full, its hope come alive!!

Anyhow, a great 20th Century song, eh?

Except that Piaf's recorded bitter deathbed words (expletives deleted) were something like, "Everything you do in this life, you pay for."

Which seems to show that she was not convinced by the song she made famous.  I suppose the liver drowned out the song.  May God grant us that understanding of the love of God in Jesus that washes away all the regrets in the blood of Jesus. His Son and Mary's Son.
 

Spurgeon's Birthday

On the great man's birthday it seems fitting to ponder a few of his uncounted numbers of quotations:

It is a wonderful thing, that even if you have been a prodigal, and have spent your living with harlots, yet if you are his child, you may call him “Father.” Did not the prodigal say, “Father, I have sinned?” There is good pleading in this fact, for you are not unchilded even by your sin.

There is only one church. Here and there, earth and heaven make a little division to our senses, but there is no division in the mind of God; he sees one general assembly of all his people, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.

There are some who do little else but complain. They complain of the times, of the weather, of the government, of their families, of their trade; if, for once, they would complain of themselves, they might have a more deserving subject for fault-finding.

The Lord knows how, without violating the human will (which he never does), so to influence the heart that the man with full consent, against his former will, yields to the will of God, and is made willing in the day of God’s power.

My horse invariably comes home in less time than he makes the journey out. He pulls the carriage with a hearty good will when his face is towards home. Should not I also both suffer and labour the more joyously because my way lies towards heaven, and I am on pilgrimage to my Father’s house, my soul’s dear home and resting place?

Take life and death just as they come, bit by bit. You know how the Spartans endeavoured to keep back the Persians. They took possession of the pass of Thermopylæ, and there the brave two hundred stood and held the way against myriads. The enemy could only advance one by one. Now, do not think of all the armies of your troubles that are coming in the future, but meet them one by one. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Duke

Congratulations to the Duke of Edinburgh who was 90 yesterday.  Is he really 90?  I fear he looks no older than me . . .

He tried to sound 90 in his interview,

"I reckon I've done my bit so I want to enjoy myself a bit now, with less responsibility, less frantic rushing about, less preparation, less trying to think of something to say," he said. "On top of that, your memory's going - I can't remember names and things."

In the light of which it is somewhat strange that his wife bestowed upon him a new name/title to remember - that of Lord High Admiral, a title that was hers until yesterday. 

Isn't that marriage?  You get to your 90th birthday and for a present the wife decides you should be doing one of her chores to help her out . . .

Birthday

Today is the birthday of Horatius Bonar.

The depth of his devotional poetry is being rediscovered and rightly so. It is quite ironic that this pastor-poet wrote hymns from within a church that would not sing them! Until very recently the Free Church of Scotland would only sing Psalms.

Quite a journey to North Cali. But that's the joy of Christian music. Why not take a moment of time to listen this through? You haven't time? Well it takes longer than this to hear Jesus' voice usually so maybe, just maybe, make 2011 a year to stop.

To come.

To rest.

To learn.

To find.

Then, and only then, to walk in His company. It was good enough for Horatius . . .