I don’t like to do things just because they’re popular. In fact when there’s a new fashion trend I like to avoid it as long as I can. It’s the same with books. If everyone is reading something I don’t want to read it. I”m sure there’s a load of dysfunction or authority issues underlying that but let’s not go there. All that to say that I reluctantly decided to read Ann Voskamp’s book 1000 Gifts this summer. It has been highly recommended by two friends that I love and let’s just be honest, I have a hard time giving thanks in all things. I am pessimistic and automatically think of the negatives first. So in order to challenge me in this area I decided to bring it to Tahoe and read it. I also am a “say it like it is” kind of person so her poetic, story telling style can be a bit hard for me at times. However, it’s been so good for me. It’s challenging me and I’m praying that God will use it to make me more thankful in all things. The big, the small, the great, the hard. I highly recommend reading this book. Here are a few (okay more than a few) quotes that have stuck out to me. I know there will be more to come as well. It’s just so good.
Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something, other.
A father said this after losing his child and Ann was saying how it shouldn’t have happened. “Just that maybe..maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.”
Eucharisteo–thanksgiving–always precedes the miracle.
I don’t even know they are gifts really until I write them down and that is really what they look like. Gifts He bestows. This writing it down–it is sort of like….unwrapping love.”
For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul.
Thanks makes now a sanctuary. And I take my bows: I will not desecrate this moment with ignorant hurry or sordid ingratitude.
Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks.
Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world, because The Word has nail-scarred hand that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, “I know. I know.” The passion the page is a Person, and the lens I were of the Word is not abstract idea but the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain.
Without God’s Word as a lens, the wold warps.
When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn’t all become gift? For He might now have.
What about you? Have you read this book? How has it changed you? Do you struggle with giving thanks like me? I recommend picking it up. It’s worth it.