A birthday wish

Today is my birthday! And as I sit here in my living room on this gloomy, overcast Saturday morning while everyone else in my house is asleep like a bunch of field mice, I am thinking about the significance of this day. Is it any different than any other day? Should I place any more importance on this day than another? Good question. Part of me says, "Of course it is a special day! It is MY birthday! MINE! It should be a day filled with ME! All about ME!" Another part of me says, "It may be the day I was born forty-three years ago, but I did not get here on my own. The reason I am here today is because God has preserved my life all this time. Given me health. Blessed me more than I could ever deserve. Surrounded me with incredible people that have taken care of me in sickness, provided for me when I could not, and loved me when I did nothing but act unlovable. Therefore it is not a day about me. It is a day to celebrate what other's, most notably God, have done for me." And the battle wages. Will I be grateful for what God has done or will I be depressed because I think I am not getting what I want or need? Another good question! What do I have to be grateful for? That I do not have a job and have not had one for two months, yet we have not lacked for one thing in all that time. In fact, we have been blessed in some ways more than ever during this time. That I do not know where I am going to find a job and have not had any solid prospects in two months, yet God has given direction as to what kind of work He wants me to do. Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, "These were the best of times and the worst of times..." Although I cannot say that this birthday finds me at the worst of times, I think it has been some of the best. I have recently experienced emotions that ranged from one side of the spectrum to the other. However, I always come back to realize that God is the same today as He was yesterday and the day before that... I have seen His faithfulness before and I know He still loves me! He has blessed me with this time to be at home, to serve outside our home in various ways that I would never have had if not for my jobless state. So yes this birthday finds me in a position that I have not been on a birthday in about twenty-eight years, unemployed. But what I want more than anything else on this birthday is not a job. My birthday wish is to have God's heart for the people He wants me to serve. To see those I come in contact with through His eyes. To have his compassion for the multitudes that are like sheep without a shepherd.

Dear Father, Please fill me with your Spirit that I may be Your's completely. Let it be! Amen