I celebrated another birthday last week. I never liked birthdays. When I was young, my birthday was always the occasion for someone else to have fun. On the first birthday I remember, my aunt stood me in front of the TV where some dumb looking clown called out my name, including middle name, in the birthday list. Everyone in the family laughed \u2013 except me. Middle name on TV! How embarrassing! One year my birthday party was a trip to the stables and horseback riding. Everyone had fun but me. I had never ridden a horse before, have not ridden one since, and unless there are horses in heaven, I will never ride another one. Another year my birthday party was at Playland Park, the forerunner of AstroWorld in southwest Houston. We ate Hot Dogs and rode the Ferris Wheel. I left my Hot Dog somewhere on the sharp down-hill turn. As to ever riding another Ferris Wheel, see my comment above on horses. So, out of Birthday paranoia, I always insisted that my birthday be low key with no parties. In fact, my favorite way to spend my birthday is with family, in a quiet restaurant that offers a free meal on one\u2019s birthday. That was my story \u2013 until last week. Thanks to Facebook, I received 184 birthday greetings. Some brought laughter, others brought memory tears. So, I repent. Even birthdays are days that \u201cthe Lord has made . . . We will rejoice and be glad in it.\u201d (Psalm 118:24). OK, now I feel better.<\/p>\n
Join me in remembering the following global prayer concerns:
\n\u2022 Pray for Stephen as he conducts storying training for those working in East and South Asia.
\n\u2022 Continue to pray for Martha\u2019s (Spain) mother as the insurance money for hospital care is running out.
\n\u2022 Pray for the Ukrainian presidential elections in January.
\n\u2022 Pray for those who celebrate Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7 and worship on that day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I celebrated another birthday last week. I never liked birthdays. When I was young, my birthday was always the occasion for someone else to have fun. On the first birthday I remember, my aunt stood me in front of the TV where some dumb looking clown called out my name, including middle name, in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}