The dash- birthdays and doing good

It’s my birthday. I won’t say my age, but it’s a slight bit over 30. It’s hard to imagine I am turning 31, when all three of my children will be older than their mother! As a kid, our birthdays were never a big event; in fact, I don’t think I had a birthday party until I was well into my adult years. We did, however, get to choose our own cake. Mine was chocolate with white fluffy frosting between the two round layers, with chocolate drizzled on top. My birthday has been amid interesting events. Being stalled in Kansas, knowing no one, breaking my foot on my birthday, being sick, seeing friends, my father passing,  and the year I turned the same age that my father was when he died was sobering.

Why should this year be any different? I spent the morning caressing the arm of a dear friend, and praying before I left, thanking God for the 41 years I have been honored to be a friend, and asking God to take him home. If God allows him to leave this earth today, the 27^th of January, that would be a wonderful gift, albeit not without a few tears.

The dash. We see it everywhere in the cemetery.  The name, the year they were born, the dash, and the year they died. The dash. Such a short little line, and yet it contains so much. What we do with our dash, the many birthdays we celebrate in this world, cannot be understood by simply looking at the dash.

I held my friend’s hand today, knowing what was in 41 years of his dash. I know in my 31 (I am not 31 if you need me to tell the truth) years of “dashing”, God has done so many things, and if God wills, I will have a few more before the date is entered, ending my dashing.

Jesus lived 33 years. In his dash, Peter describes how Jesus lived.

“how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him.” Acts10:38

We know more about the “doing good” and the “dashing”. Healed the blind, raised the dead, made the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and cast out demons. Jesus turned water into wine, fish and bread into a buffet, and made a simple statement that turned a mob who came to kill a woman, into quietly dispersing.  Jesus taught a bunch of men to listen and see beyond the obvious, look before they leapt, or in Peter’s case, look before he drew his sword, and turned a bunch of back-wood hicks into orators.

We don’t know much about the 30 years before, but we do know about the three years of dashing, and it’s quite the rap sheet.

How do I dash well? How do I take advantage of every moment, every breath, every opportunity to live so my dash has value, shares my faith, and makes a difference in someone else’s life?  

I might have, perhaps, been slightly hyperventilating over this birthday number. It’s not a magical number, and it doesn’t end in a 0 or a 5, but it reminded me that I am getting older. Have I made a difference? What else can I do to be effective? Retirement, I don’t want to be retired, I want to be moving, and to do so, I have to be reshod, or retreaded?  But I also don’t want to be busy, frantic to feel I have been effective, and to rate my dash on my earthly focus. That seems to be a problem with us, humanity. We need to see success, or at least positivity, now. Eternity is where I will truly understand better how effective my dash was. Now is the only time I have to be intentional and fruitful. Just one day at a time. Just one prayer at a time. Just spending time with one another at a time. Just one meal with a friend. Just one supper delivered to people whose life is in chaos. Just one donation to a worthy cause. Just one… Just one thing at a time. I don’t mean to use the word merely as a label, as if it were insignificant.

Back in the day, Michael Jordon and Nike made famous the quote, “Just do it.”  Instead of making excuses why I can’t, I need to “just do it,” Just do something. Jesus looked and saw and did. He went about doing good. He went out of his way to do good. He saw the teary eyes and did good. He heard the stomachs growling and did good. He listened to the crowd, and rather than react, he just went about doing good.

I look at the cards I got in the mail, see the birthday notices online and in texts, and I smile. I smile because so many of them are relationships, because I did something, and God turned it into something good. Paul reminds me not to get caught up in getting tired of “just doing it” because he knows we get caught up in not seeing our “dashing” from heaven’s eyes.  

Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.“

 I won’t have chocolate cake tonight, the tradition, but I will enjoy family, have a great supper, and laugh. After all, when we talk about someone’s living in their “dash”, often that’s what we remember. The times we enjoyed together, ate meals, and laughed. My challenge is to keep living, keep “dashing” so that my testimony outlasts my life, however long God has determined for me.