Birth day

I don't usually write about my birthday on my blog, but I'm going to make an exception this year. This morning, as I was getting ready for church, I suddenly realized that this year my birthday, January 25, fell on the same day of the week as the one on which I was born. So Friday at 7:38 p.m. PT was exactly 28 years since the moment I came into this world, same day of the week and everything! Pretty cool, eh? :)

My cousin, grandma, and mum helping me blow out my candles on my first birthday*
(Apparently I was scared of fire or candles or something back then...)

Twenty-seven years later (not afraid of candles anymore!)

*Sorry, I didn't have any pictures of newborn Ali on hand for this post, so you get to see 1-year-old Ali instead.

Bible Verse 4

This past week I was wondering how to best find really good, meaningful verses to memorize if I can't come up with any on my own. I decided to type 'good verses to memorize' into Google and see what it came up with. The search results found lots of sites to give me some help, and while browsing the top two sites I found more verses than I'll be able to memorize throughout the year. So, on weeks when a verse doesn't just come to me, I'll look at those sites and find a verse to memorize. That's how I found my fourth verse.

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"Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." ~ Psalm 119:11 KJV

I love this verse, especially in the context of 52 Weeks 52 Verses, because that's the essence of why I'm doing this challenge. I want to hide God's word in my heart so I can recall the verses I need to remember when I'm in trying circumstances. So that instead of looking verses up in my Bible or relying on tools like concordances or online Bibles I can recall them straight from my heart. And, most importantly, so that I can grow closer to God each day!

Picked from What Christians Want to Know.com

My spiritual gift

Throughout my life, and especially throughout my teens and 20s, I've been searching for my spiritual gifts, the place that I uniquely fit into God's work in the church and in my community. Many people have told me that my spiritual gift is music. I've been playing violin since I was 4 and started piano when I was 9. My younger sister and brother and I often played for special music in our home church and also in many churches throughout the valley. As we grew and matured, both mentally and in musical ability, we began to appreciate these opportunities more and even enjoyed coming up with fun and interesting arrangements to share. Even so, I never felt like playing music was one of my spiritual gifts. Other people told me that writing was my spiritual gift. That seemed quite possible, since I do really enjoy writing and sharing with others in that way. But was it really a spiritual gift? Did my writing actually help my church? I didn't really know.

Today, though, it finally hit me. I was thinking about a Skype conversation I'd had with my friend Kezia last week. I met Kezia while we were volunteers at a baby home in Tanzania two years ago. I had mentioned to her that I'd had the opportunity to meet another former volunteer at a youth conference over New Year's. The other volunteer had mentioned to me that my comments on her blog had really encouraged her during her time overseas last year. When I relayed that story to Kezia, she told me that on her latest visit to Tanzania this past summer, three of the volunteers who were still there had said similar things about my comments to them on their blogs or on Facebook. I was surprised. It was such a little thing I had done. Just read their blogs - which I did eagerly to find out how the babies and children that I loved were doing - and left comments every once in awhile. Not even on every post, but just every so often, when I had something to say. I've been thinking about this exchange for the past week and today it came to me as I was tidying up the bathroom. My spiritual gift could be, might be, is (?) encouragement to others.

Maybe God has given me the gift of listening to others, empathizing with them or for their situation, and responding in ways that give them encouragement. Could it be this simple? Typing a short note on Facebook, writing a quick e-mail, leaving a comment on somebody's blog, doesn't feel like much to me. But maybe, just maybe, it feels like a lot to them. I pondered this for awhile this afternoon, and right in the middle of my pondering I saw that my mum had posted a few new blog posts on our church blog. The last one shocked me. A message straight into my heart. A message to love, care for, and encourage other people. I don't think for one minute that all these occurrences this past week and month were pure happenstance. I think God's been working, slowly nudging me to realize that maybe my words count, that my words matter, that my words can make a difference for people around me. Maybe my spiritual gift is music, maybe it's writing, maybe it's encouragement. Or maybe it's a combination of all three, a perfect blend that God created and has always intended just for me.

Bible Verse 3

This past week was a 'down' week for me. I didn't do very well at keeping up with studying the lesson quarterly and therefore never found a verse to memorize from the lesson. But God was good and threw a verse into my lap on Sabbath during the Sabbath School lesson study time. Somehow, throughout the discussion about the end of the creation week, the topic of God giving us what we need came up and someone in the class read a verse from Philippians 4. I liked the verse and continued reading on in the chapter as most everyone else in the class shut their Bibles and the discussion continued. And then I arrived at Philippians 4:19 and, yes, again I already know this verse, but it just struck me as one I need to focus on and think about more in my day to day life. So it's become my verse for week 3.

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"And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." ~ Philippians 4:19 NKJV

The past few weeks Jonathan and I have been looking around the Bangor area (and the internet) searching for some more storage space for our apartment. Our kitchen, with just one small wall of base and wall cabinets, most desperately needs storage space. After looking on countless websites and visiting numerous stores, we thought we'd found the answer in a large pantry cabinet from Lowe's. However, upon bringing it home, lugging the heavy package up the snowy outside stairs to our apartment, and opening the box, we found that the cabinet was quite flimsy with just a thin back and would need to be screwed to the walls. Not quite what we had expected and not something we wanted to do to a kitchen that isn't ours. So we packed it all back up in the box and returned it a couple days later. We still don't have what we need for our kitchen, but today we cleaned up the back bedroom (currently our storage area) and managed to fit most of the canned and bulk food into a cabinet that was left in there when the previous renters moved out. It's not the perfect solution, we're still looking for something better, but it works, and I have no doubt that God will give us what a better solution right when we need it most.

Found during the Youth/Collegiate Sabbath School class at Bangor SDA Church | Saturday, January 19, 2013

Bible Verse 2

"For it is the God who commands light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:6 NKJV

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As I was reading through the Sabbath School lesson for the second week of January, I looked up this verse and was struck by the words. These simply put, but powerful words plunged straight from my Bible's pages into my heart. That the God of the universe, the One who can command light to shine wherever he wants it, can also shine straight into my heart is amazing! Even with all the cloudy weather we've been having here in this part of Maine this week, this text stuck with me and gave me sunshine in my soul.

Picked from the SDA Sabbath School Quarterly | Lesson 2: Creation: Forming the World | Thursday, January 10