Introduction
This service project has been created to help people in the ARC/Shelters/Community Centers celebrate their birthday while away from home and family.
Service Project
Invite the women to bring items to pack in a birthday box for a man or women. Gift items could be candy, comfort snacks, hygiene items and a Bible. Check with the facility to see if you can deliver a cake or cupcakes to be enjoyed by all in the program. Include a birthday tablecloth, plates and napkins, a banner, party hats, noise blowers, and a small gift. The gift box could also be decorated.
Ask the women to make a homemade birthday card to let celebrants know they are thought of and prayed for.
Refreshments
Share a decorated birthday cake or cupcakes along with coffee, tea or milk.
Reflections
- What are your favorite birthday traditions or memories?
- What traditions in your family have been carried on from generation to generation?
- What would it feel like to get no presents on your birthday or not to celebrate?
- How would it feel to receive a “birthday party” box from someone you’ve never met?
- What are ways you could make a birthday extra special for someone you know?
Related Scripture
“You’ll be enriched in every way so that you can be generous in every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in Thanksgiving to God” (2 Cor. 9:11).
Birthday Celebrations
I remember when all four of our children were born. I knew that life would not be the same. I also had an overwhelming thankfulness to God that I was blessed with these new lives.
As years have gone by, we’ve celebrated every milestone in their lives, including their birthdays. The big ones: 1st, 5th, 10th, 13th, and 16th. We felt that it was important to show them how much their life meant to us, that we are celebrating one more year on this earth with friends and family.
With each birthday we celebrate, we can see the changes. We see physical growth. When we are older, we still change physically, but sometimes we may feel that something is missing in our life. Growing older may not be what we expected. It may be that we haven’t started to live—really live, because we haven’t considered our need for God. Scripture tell us in Ephesians 2:4, 5 (NIV) that “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we where dead in our transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
“If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” God says in 1 John 1:1(NIV). But we know that everyone has sinned. Still, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
When we accept Jesus as our Savior and Friend, we truly start to live. We are born spiritually. How is your spiritual life? Have you experienced a new birth in Him? “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away, behold new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV). Do you have spiritual life and a relationship with the Lord?
My calling to follow Jesus has taken me to live in Arizona for 12 years. Often I had to drive from Tucson to Phoenix. On that road all you see is the dry dessert. One day my car decided to break down and I was stuck on the side of the road in a hundred plus heat! I had no air conditioner in the car and no water to drink. My mouth was dry as dust. I needed water! Sometimes we feel that we are spiritually stuck in the desert, even though we have been born again of His Spirit. We go through a dry spell and thirst for the living water to refresh us. If you have been experiencing a dry spell and God seems distant, ask Him to refresh your spirit. Pray for a fresh vision and for the comfort and power of His Spirit.
Allow God’s cleansing waters to wash over you today. Remember that after we have been spiritually born it is time to live a spiritual life with Him. You can celebrate a new birthday each year with Him, one where you never grow old.
