Mandy's Musings

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Age is only a number... or so they say. If that were true, I wouldn't have made such a fuss of my eldest's 21st birthday this last weekend. Nor would I have made people aware of my 'significant' birthdays where the number ends with a zero. Perhaps in generations gone by, such birthdays or milestones were not so much of a 'thing' compared to now. Plus, not only do we celebrate our birthdays signifying the years we have lived on this earth, we also now celebrate other milestones such as how many years we have been married, or how many years service we have completed in a particular job/vocation or the anniversary of a special date when something major happened. We celebrate and remember. We mark time that has passed. In today's  Morning Prayer, we had the reading from Genesis about Abram who was a little frustrated that time was passing and he was growing into an old man but still didn't have an heir. Hearing this, God made a covenant with Abram and told him to look up at the stars, promising him that his descendants were going to be as many as these stars and that he will 'go to (your) ancestors in peace and be buried in a good old age' Perhaps that quietened Abram's fears and it was helpful for him to know what the sum of his life was going to be. It was certainly the foundation of God's plan for the world and the three great Abrahamic faiths that came from this covenant. However, most of us don't live with such a vast scope of life in front of us, we tend to live from day to day and occasionally, when we celebrate a milestone birthday or anniversary, we wonder what the future still holds for us: what ambitions we still have, what we have achieved and what we still want to do, will our dreams really come true? It's good to muse, reflect and take stock... as long as, like Abram, we allow God to speak to us and assure us that our futures are hopeful and our mark on this earth, however tiny we might think it is compared to others, is still so significant.

Every blessing,

Mandy