The Year of Crucifixion

I never pay much attention to birthdays anymore. Haven't for years. For some reason I just stopped caring to celebrate them. Some might say it's because I don't want to acknowledge how fast time is passing and hence, how quickly I'm getting older. Whatever the reason, birthdays simply don't appear on my radar screen much any more.

Except for this year. You see, this is the year of crucifixions.

By age 24 Orson Welles had co-written, produced, directed and stared in Citizen Kane, the film many people consider to be the greatest in American history. By 33 Jesus Christ was concluding a ministry that would alter human history as we know it, culminating later that year in his sacrificial death.

Now, I'm not comparing Welles to Christ. But there are times when I have to sit back in wonder at what some men and woman are able to accomplish while they are still so young; while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs, still preoccupied with trying to find out just who we are and what we want to do in the first place.

It's just weird to think about. Today I turn 33, the same age as Christ when he died. I still have problems comprehending myself as an adult, let alone as mature enough to save an entire planet.

I'm not downplaying Christ's divinity or assuming I'll get anywhere near a call as important as Christ's, but simply marveling, I guess, at how close He feels to me today, how human, how real. We always think of Him as so much higher than human, so much more inaccessible than ourselves and yet, in a very real way, at this time in our lives, he and I would have been peers.

Maybe I'm reading far too much emotional resonance into this, but it's something I've been thinking about for months now as my birthday drew closer.

It's both comforting and exasperating.