As I write this post, my late wife Robyn is having her first birthday in Heaven. Shortly after she died, we decided that we would hold our very own holiday each year on her birthday. “Cake day” would be the way we would remember Robyn’s life. Robyn loved to bake, and she loved good cake. So eventually she began to take up the adventure of baking her own cakes.
The last few birthdays I actually stopped ordering cakes because she loved to make her own cake. And let me tell you, she got good at baking cakes! A few cakes she loved to make became family favorites. So last Friday, I bought all the ingredients I needed to make the chocolate raspberry ganache cake we all loved so much. Since the last time we ate it, one of us developed a gluten sensitivity and one of us is allergic to eggs. I made the necessary adjustments to the recipe and began following the recipe.
It went well until I tried to make the ganache. The instructions said to warm buttermilk until it just started to boil. I — only knowing about the rolling boil of water that I experience when I make my pour-over-style coffee in the mornings — waited for bubbling cream. I learned that this is not what the recipe meant, and I ruined an entire container of buttermilk. Which, by the way, separates into a smelly water and curdles if you actually boil it. As soon as I wrap up this post, I’m off to try again.
Our family is doing well. One year ago I sat in a hospice room and was simply amazed Robyn was still with us. God had been so kind to keep her until her birthday. Little did I know He would give her nearly 3 more months with her family before he called her home. And yet, the memory still remains. And I continue to see the curse of sin in operation for others as well. Just this morning, I received an email telling me of another man whose wife was just taken to be with the Lord in Heaven. He has a little child. He is bereft of the wife of his youth. It takes me back to last November and the stark reality that I was now a widower. It was not unexpected, but it was still a path I never realized I would walk.
But with all this talk of birthdays and heaven-goings, it got me thinking. Do they celebrate birthdays in Heaven? I’m starting to know quite a few people who are there. Robyn, Seth, Irv, my grand parents, and a pile of acquaintances. It’s probably a question we really can’t know until we get there. Nonetheless, I think we can at least see two possibilities.
The first is that we will still talk about our birthdays because they will be even more significant in heaven. You see, we will be glorified in Heaven. Our life will be exactly as God always intended it and we will be without sin. So I can see how we may think very seriously and fondly of the day we were born, realizing that our own life is such a blessing from the Lord. He did not have to create us. He could have treated us poorly and discarded us after a miserable life. But even in such difficulty, He is so kind to His children. And then magnify that infinitely and we get closer to realizing the glory of life in Heaven with the Lord! Truly, I will be happy to think about the day God chose for me to live and be His image bearer.
The second possible way we might think about birthdays is to think very little of them. Consider all the church age saints who don’t know the date of their birth. Of course God could clear this up in heaven, but the point is cultural. We love birthdays in our era where we can take meticulous records and use calendars to remember such details. But what about the many people in the previous 2000 years who did not know — and might not even have been concerned — about the exact date they were born.
Another line of thought is that in heaven, even if we know our birthdate, we may be more concerned about other matters. Pete Witkowski has made this point as he considered if it is right to talk to his late wife:
“But even if she were to interact with my ramblings from heaven, she would have little to share with me for she is perfect, and I (as my kids will happily attest to) am not. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” The struggles, fears, worries, hopes, and desires that I wish to process aloud with her, the things the make me yearn for her open ear, derive from my incomplete knowledge of the Lord and from my sinful frailty. April no longer shares in those things, nor can she relate to my incompleteness for she knows the eternal joy of completeness. She has crossed the Jordan. Even if she could respond to my mumblings, I could no more understand her knowledge than a three-year-old could understand the terminology used to develop rocket science. As Paul noted of his vision of heaven, “he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” And what she could share with me has already been shared with me through the Scriptures. As Jesus said in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them (Lk 16:29).”
And so, on this same line of reasoning, I wonder if we won’t be concerned about our birthdays. I really can’t say for sure. If we do, then it will surely be more focused on the glory of our wonderful Creator. If we don’t, then it will surely be that we are taken up with “higher” matters.
But if they do celebrate birthdays in heaven, I’m guessing it will be the best birthday Robyn has ever had.
Thoughts Worth Thinking 