My World at Sixty-four!

Have just awakened, three hours later than normal, to the smell of coffee and breakfast in my warm home and have read many dozens of FB and email birthday wishes. I know in a few minutes my children and grandchildren will call telling me Happy Birthday and how much they love me. I awoke with my wife whispering that and hearing I did not snore all night.  You smile but each of those are tiny ingredients to a sense of real blessing this morning. So today I am sixty-four years of age and I have to say it feels really strange but good.  This week I have tended to read the obituaries more carefully, have thought about so many friends and relatives that have left me and all with this deep sense of just wanting to thank God for another year on this Great Creation called Earth and Life!

This week has been one of some great moments and some really not great moments with some concerning developments and issues with some of my students which I take far too personally my wife tells me but still, I do!  I do for once more, each of those young minds and lives are part of the tapestry of our tomorrow and I never short sight that God has placed here, now, doing what I do that has a brush of color on each of those lives in my words, my actions, my hopes and my drive to lift them from their current state. This is very serious business for me and when the headwinds of disappointment and yes, anger, pound me, I look past that to the tomorrows for these young minds put into my care for a semester or two.  This, my teaching, I realize daily, is what God has gifted and called me to do and thus it is the great blessing of all the blessings I have yet experienced on this earth.

The world is seemingly an endless cauldron of fears and doubst, disappoints and worries but then the world has always been that way as I recall my young life, my studies and experiences around this globe.  The walk of Man is not easy, not supposed to be nor will it ever be.  But here is the one thing I know ... 

I serve a risen Saviour,
He's in the world today;
I know that He is living,
Whatever men may say;
I see His hand of mercy,
I hear His voice of cheer,
And just the time I need Him
He's always near.

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives
today!
He walks with me and He talks with me
Along life's narrow way.
He lives, He live, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives:
He lives within my heart.

So as I close My World at Sixty-four!, I could not be happier with the components of my life nor the compilation of all those elements into this daily walk. I realize there are more days behind me than in front of me but the great news is that it is perfectly alright for each day is a blessing to get to do what I love to do be it teaching, singing praises to a Loving God, or encouraging people that need lifted from the mire of fear and doubt. 

Well, have heard from both of my wonderful children and had Happy Birthday sung to me by three little ones, will gets hugs from all of them this day, great breakfast plus a chocolate muffin and a wife that loves and respects me .... Blessed? Ah yup!!!!!