120 blessings

For those who don't know, I am in a Bible class called Faith Walk. Faith Walk is not your typical Bible class. Instead of a history or theology, it is more personal. It's almost like being graded for Youth group. It is very open. In this class, in our most recent entry for our journals, everyone had to write 120 blessings in his or her life. Everyone groaned. This sounded like a hard assignment. For me, it started out easy, but quickly began to become hard and harder as it progressed. But nonetheless, I did it. I have 120 blessings. With thanksgiving in sight, I thought this would be a good post to put up. I hope this can make you realize that we have much more blessings given by God. See if you can do the same.

120 Blessings

1. God feeds me every day
2. I have a place to live, a house, a roof over my head
3. I have clothes to werea
4. A loving yet disciplinary father
5. A mother who is a parent and a friend
6. Two cats now, five cats in my lifetime
7. A bed to sleep in
8. My very own laptop
9. My GameCube and Game Boy Advance
10. I'm not sharing a bedroom
11. For the most part, I have a bathroom to myself
12. A TV to watch (although it only has 2 channels, I am grateful)
13. A fireplace to keep us warm in the house during the winter
14. Salvation from sin through God's grace
15. Unconditionally loving God
16. A dog who has lived for 14 years
17. DSL internet connection
18. mp3 player
19. All my music CDs, especially ApologetiX
20. Having Nintendo since age 3
21. All my videogames
22. The Bible, God's Word
23. The friend I have in Jesus
24. The Holy Spirit living in me
25. A desk
26. Monty Python
27. Mountain Dew, especially Code Red
28. Karen Zona, a youth leader who has lasted 3 years
29. A new youth room
30. Jim & Pam Brady, my substitute grandparents
31. Team bonuses
32. Every quiz out I've gotten, especially the 15 this year, a personal record
33. My Ark Bible and Spring City quiz teams
34. Dennis & Jill Willman, who have always encouraged me in quizzing
35. The Moss family, for training in quizzing and friendly quizzing rivalry
36. Dave & Vicki Deitrick, for being concerned about my spiritual growth
37. The support of the church for their quiz team
38. Being on the Top 50 Quizzers List for 2 consecutive years
39. Winning the ACC Tournament in 2005
40. Going to Ohio for the Quizzing Invitational
41. Mike Schwager. Indubiately a blessing. I'll drink to that, and everyone else concurs
42. Angela & Caleb, who told me it's alright for me to be single
43. Rosa, who for a month let me feel what it's like to not be single
44. Christine, who has been my friend from beginning until, going with me wherever
45. All my secret sponsers in quizzing, from prayer to food
46. My custom shoes (they say "Quizzer")
47. 2 coats, 1 of them leather, to keep me warm outside in the winter
48. 6 ApologetiX concerts
49. Having 3 cars in our driveway
50. Driver's License
51. Orange pants
52. Paved driveway
53. Automatic garage door
54. Letters from Christine
55. Christopher Dock's Anabapitst perspective in their teaching
56. Being able to afford to go to Christopher Dock
57. The teachers at Christopher Dock
58. Straight A's my sophomore year
59. My table for lunch in the Longacre Commons
60. Sheila Dallas, opening her home for her summer missionary
61. Bill Elgin, who is concerned about my future
62. Bible Quizzing. Period.
63. Being in senate junior year.
64. Learning from my mistakes.
65. My blog
66. Backpack on wheels
67. Public Transportation to and from school
68. Teaching children and learning from children
69. Being able to afford college
70. Slate Hill quizzers, who treat me like a quizzing idol
71. Barbeque sauce
72. Hot sauce shots
73. 11 hour bus ride to Ohio
74. Christmas, Easter, and Summer break
75. Graduating high school in 7 months
76. Risk & Monopoly
77. The Philadelphia Eagles
78. Homestar Runner/Strong Bad E-mails
79. DVD player with surround sound
80. TI-83 Plus Calculator
81. Jesus dying on the cross and raising from the dead
82. Youth group and youth bible study
83. Fun quiz practices
84. Kool-Aid
85. Chocolate and Swedish Fish
86. Energy drinks
87. Buffets
88. Chinese restaurants
89. Forgiveness
90. A cell phone on a plan
91. Rosenberger Academic Center
92. No censorship of books or speeches at school
93. Going to the National Young Leaders Confrence
94. Friends I have made at the NYLC
95. Friends I made at CEF summer missionary training
96. Fred Hertzler, ACC Bible Quizzing cordinator
97. Good, nice quizmasters
98. God creating me
99. School chapels
100. Another option for C.O.s instead of war
101. The Spiritual gifts God has given me.
102. Frederick Mennonite Church
103. Spring City Fellowship
104. Ark Bible Chapel
105. Pastor Scott, the faithful pastor of Frederick church
106. Justin Yoast, comic relief and socializer on my behalf
107. Aaron Martin, socializes for me and is more comic relief
108. Erin, my sister
109. Living in a dead end with no traffic
110. Electronic Spanish/English Dictionary
111. Snow - closes the school
112. Snowthrower - means I don't have to shovel snow
113. Hammock Swing
114. Vacations to Connecticut
115. Italian Grandmother and Grandfather Pagano
116. Uncle Robert. May not be a father, but can be an uncle, the next closest thing
117. Being able to come into God's prescense whenever
118. Dell Tech Support
119. Woman's fear of bugs
120. Our assisstant principal......what's his name again? :-P

Isn't it odd how after Thanksgiving, a holiday dedicated to being thankful for what we have, is followed by Christmas, a holiday where people get greedy and want more? I almost believe it should be the opposite way around because I think we never really recover from the Christmas wants, and never show full appreciation of what we receive on Christmas.

P.S. In my four years of Thanksgiving Chapels, the Class of 2007 was the best! Class of 2008 was the worst. Good luck to next year, class of 2009.