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from Alathea Baptist

Birthdays and Death-days

On July 22, 2021, I had one of the strangest experiences of my life.

It was my daughter’s third birthday and I was fulfilling a longstanding promise to take her to the zoo. I remember watching her run around the petting zoo, squealing with delight as she played with the goats. A lover of fairy tales, my daughter was thrilled to meet the heroes of Three Billy Goats Gruff. And a little relieved to learn that the Blank Park Zoo does not have any trolls.

While watching my smiling daughter, face aglow, blonde hair bouncing, rapturously enjoying life, I received a phone call. The moment I saw the number, I knew what it was about. My sister’s quaking voice only confirmed what I already knew. “Josh, Mom is with Jesus.” 

Just two months prior, I had received another phone call. It was from my mom. The doctors had finally provided an explanation for the strange blackout she’d experienced in March. “Josh, it’s cancer. And it’s terminal.” They’d given her two-to-three years. But in just over two months, the cancer had destroyed her body.

Now, while watching my daughter celebrate her birthday, I learned that it was my mother’s death-day.

That surreal experience was a microcosm of all of life. Elisabeth Elliot observed that every birth is a death and every death is a birth.

This is certainly true of literal births and literal deaths. When children are born, they think they are dying. That’s why they scream. And in a sense, they are absolutely correct. Their entire pre-birth existence dies. The safe, warm world of the womb, with the secure darkness and the steady beat of Mom’s heart, is shattered in a moment by a strange new world of piercing light and alien faces. Through birth, the child’s former life dies, never to be recovered. Every birth is a death.

But every death is also a birth. When my mom’s body died, she entered into a new existence, one she’d never experienced before. By the grace of God through her faith in Christ, she was received into the mansion Jesus had prepared for her. At this very moment, she is experiencing a new, but very real, life in the presence of the One who made her for His pleasure. Her death was a birth into a new heavenly life.

The co-existence of birth and death is played out everyday. As we pass through chronos, elements of our life die so that other elements can be born. Childhood dies (lost forever), that adulthood can be born. Singleness dies, that marriage might be born. Childlessness is killed by parenthood. Childrearing dies as the empty nest stage is born. And on and on we go, until the last death and the last birth.

This is the hope and the curse that present life is subjected to. Some might find comfort in this state of affairs. But there could also be cause to despair. The naturalists call this the “circle of life”, but it could just as easily be called the “circle of death”. Are we really doomed forever to be locked in this ruthless cycle of death-births? Must gain always include loss? Is every birthday a death-day?

For the present time, the answer is, yes. We live in a God-created, sin-cursed world. As long as that is the case, death will always be interwoven with birth. In this life, there is profit in accepting this reality. But you were created for better. You were created to be eternally born and never die. 

And so, Jesus came. Two thousand years ago, there was a death and birth that shattered the cycle and introduced something new to the endless loop. Resurrection. 

Jesus died. But He did not simply experience the birth of a new phase of existence. He was not subject to the natural circle of births and deaths. The keys of birth and death are in His hands. By the power of God, He was not merely reborn. He was resurrected. On Easter morning, death itself flowed backward. And so did the cycle of birth-deaths.

Resurrection is real. It’s not just a theological concept crafted by bearded men in a seminary. It’s an actual, real thing. As real as trees and birds and automobiles. And it changes everything. Everything. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ changes the ending of the story. It means that we’re not living in a tragedy. My daughter is absolutely right. We’re living in a fairy tale. There are still some trolls under the bridge, but in the end, “they all lived happily ever after”. Everyone who is in Christ by faith will also rise again with Him.

Jesus is alive and seated at the right hand of His Father. My mom’s bodily death and heavenly birth were not her last death and birth. One day, the trump of God will sound and Mom will die to her purely spiritual existence. She will be resurrected (not born) into a new body. And from then on, there will be no more deaths for her.

The final death will be of death itself. From that point on, there will be only births and never deaths. Once sin and hell and death are consumed, the Resurrected Life will leave only that which is good and holy and nothing that is deadly or wicked. From the time of the final resurrection onward, our life will be all gain and no loss. We can’t even imagine such an existence, so ingrained into our life is this connection between birth and death. But in the Eternal State, it will always be Christmas and never winter.  

This should give us an ever living hope. Jesus won. And so did all those in Him. Death is defeated. Resurrection has triumphed. We can live each day, knowing that our deaths are leading us to life and our births will be eternal.

Praise God, for the resurrection that makes every death-day a birthday.

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