I Don't Remember My Birthday

He Remembers His covenant forever…”

Psalm 105:8a

Today is the 59^th anniversary of the day I was born.  Today I am celebrating once again that event which is so central to my existence.  But you know, though that day is extremely important to me, I have no memory of what happened that day.  I mean I was there.  It happened to me.  But I don’t remember it.  I don’t know if it was a hard labor or easy.  Did it take hours for me to be born, or did it happen quickly?  Did they slap my bottom to make me cry and start breathing? I don’t know.  As is true for all of you – I don’t remember my birthday.

Thank God, my parents remembered.  In fact, everything I know about my birthday, I know because they told me.  I know that I was an unplanned but welcomed child.  Dad was always telling people that they wanted to call me “Tucker.”  People would look at him funny.  Then he would complete the thought – “Tucker by surprise.”  I was in my 20s before I figured out what he meant.  I know what date I was born on because they told me – October 26, 1958.  I was born at 2am on the Sunday morning when they turned the clocks back an hour.  Dad used tell me that since the clocks officially got turned back at 2am, I was born twice.  I was born at 2am and an hour later it was 2am again. 

But still, I don’t remember that day.  That’s okay.  It still happened. My parents brought me into this world.  They never forgot.  They always remembered their commitment to love me, to take care of me, to teach me about Jesus, to prepare me for life and more. So even though I don’t personally remember a thing about that day, it’s a day I love to celebrate and “remember” every year… a day on which I give thanks to God for every year of life, for my parents, my sisters, my family, all the great and sometimes difficult experiences I have had, indeed for everything He has given me these past 59 years.

I share this, because I have heard people bring this up about their infant baptism.   They say things like, “How can my baptism as an infant be valid?  I wasn’t given a choice.  I can’t even remember it.”  That always strikes me as strange.  We had no choice about being born either. We can’t remember it. Yet none of us, or at least, most of us don’t complain about being born.  As I said, we are thankful for our parents bringing us into this world.  We celebrate that day that we can’t remember. 

Shouldn’t baptism be the same?  After all, even though we can’t remember the day of our baptism, our heavenly Father does.  He was there.  That day He was at work.  He washed away our sins.  He adopted us as His own children..  Baptism is not a day, as some Christians believe, on which we made promises to God.  If it were then remembering that day might be a valid concern.  No, according to Scripture, baptism is a day on which God makes promises to us.  At baptism, as Peter wrote, God promised us a good conscience towards God.  He promised us that “as we have been united with Him (Jesus) in a death like his, we shall certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”  That death like His was our baptism, where Paul writes, “We were buried with Christ by baptism into death…”

It doesn’t really matter that I can’t remember the day of my baptism.  What really matters, even for those of you who can remember your adult baptism, is that God remembers. He remembers what He did in my life that day.  He remembers the promises He made that day. As the Psalmist wrote, “He remembers His covenant forever…”  He will never fail to keep those promises, never fail to love and watch over me or you.   

But what does it mean then when we urge people to remember their baptism daily?  We are not talking about remembering the event.  Far more important is that every day  you and I recall the significance of what God did, the promises He made, the forgiveness He gave and His faithfulness to it all.. That we remember the fact that He will always remember that in the face of guilt, He has promised forgiveness.  in the face of grief, He has gives comfort.  In the face of feeling sidelined by life, He has promised that we are His.  In the face of rejection He has given acceptance.  In the face of death, He has promised us life everlasting.  Now that really is worth remembering… and in fact God always will.  Amen.