I can’t remember my first birthday. I am sure you are having trouble, too. I have pictures. I seem to remember colors, locations, and people in the pictures, but I think it is the picture I remember, not the event. It still is an important day, though. Whether I remember it or not.

Birthdays help us look back. They make us remember what life was like a year ago, or ten years ago for that matter. I rarely wonder on my birthday what my birthday will be like 5 years from now, but I always look back to birthdays past and remember.

This Sunday Westwind celebrates its first birthday. We are one year old and we have a lot to look back on. It has been a great year and we have grown up fast. However, unlike my usual birthday remembrances, I am compelled to look at Westwind’s future and wonder what it will be like. What will the five-year-old Westwind look like? Or even the twenty-year-old? It brings a bigger smile to my face than a cake full of candles to think that Westwind will make a place as a worshipping community to many who struggled to find one. To see people come to know Christ in a personal manner, being baptized in obedience to him, and living out the Great Commandment and Great Commission in their life.

As we celebrate Westwind’s first birthday, I hope you will spend time wondering what it will be like with you in it.