I’d be lying if I said it was easy for me to be in another country halfway around the world with people I just met a week or so ago on my birthday. Yes I’m aware that birthdays are just another day and once you’re turning 26 they aren’t so special anymore. It is however a day that I enjoy spending with my friends and family. I hold people close and I enjoy spending holidays together and special days like birthdays, be it mine or theirs, together.
I feel so selfish saying that because I am seeing poverty and lack all around me. I am daily seeing children with no families and no shoes on their feet. Children who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Yet here I am, 26 years old, and I’m feeling just a little bit sad to not be around my family and close friends on my birthday. Not all day was I feeling this way, just when I started receiving messages and calls from family and friends back home. Right when I was starting to feel down about being in another country and getting another year older, my sweet new friends came singing into the room with a candle and cookies.
I am reminded especially today that this life is but a vapor in eternity. I am reminded what an honor it is to have this opportunity to serve. I am reminded the blessing I have been given to get to know some amazing new people and experience an amazing new culture. I have been blessed. There is no better way I could have chosen to spend my birthday than with a group of people who have the same heart beat. The same desire, to further spread the gospel of Jesus and share his love with those who need it most. There is no better way that I could have spent today.
Matthew 6:19-21 Amplified Bible (AMP) 19 “Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart [your wishes, your desires; that on which your life centers] will be also.
I feel so selfish saying that because I am seeing poverty and lack all around me. I am daily seeing children with no families and no shoes on their feet. Children who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Yet here I am, 26 years old, and I’m feeling just a little bit sad to not be around my family and close friends on my birthday. Not all day was I feeling this way, just when I started receiving messages and calls from family and friends back home. Right when I was starting to feel down about being in another country and getting another year older, my sweet new friends came singing into the room with a candle and cookies.
I am reminded especially today that this life is but a vapor in eternity. I am reminded what an honor it is to have this opportunity to serve. I am reminded the blessing I have been given to get to know some amazing new people and experience an amazing new culture. I have been blessed. There is no better way I could have chosen to spend my birthday than with a group of people who have the same heart beat. The same desire, to further spread the gospel of Jesus and share his love with those who need it most. There is no better way that I could have spent today.
Matthew 6:19-21 Amplified Bible (AMP) 19 “Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart [your wishes, your desires; that on which your life centers] will be also.