One Thousand Gifts - Chapter 3

The vlog for Chapter 3 of Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts is now online at Bloom (In)Courage.

It is in this chapter where Ann writes about how she started her list of 1,000 gifts.  It brought me back to when I started my own list... it was a time when my heart was sore and when I so desperately wanted to see and feel joy.  So, I started my list with...

1. It is well with my soul.

Reading that sentence makes my heart smile.  You see, this week my heart was revisited by that same soreness... many questions of what-ifs and if-onlys came swirling back.  Hard questions without any real tangible answers.  The difference is, this time I am hitting #330 on my list and truly, truly, I am more quickly (still not right away... but with God's grace I'll get there soon!) able to see that God is in the details of every-thing.  So, I will write again...

330. It is well with my soul.

... thankful that though many things escape my understanding, I know that it is well with my soul.

Here are my favourite quotes from Chapter 3 - First Flight:

Gifts He bestows. This writing it down - it is sort of like... unwrapping love.

If living eucharisteo is the key to unlocking the mystery of life, this I want. I want the hunt, the long sleuth, the careful piecing together. To learn how to be grateful and happy, whether hands full or hands empty. This is a secret worth spending a life on learning.

Thanks is what multiplies the joy and makes any life large and I hunger for it.

I name.  And I know the face I face.  God's!  God is in the details; God is in the moment.  God is in all that blurs by in a life - even hurts in a life. GOD!

Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped.  God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows.

The gift list is thinking upon His goodness - and this, this pleases Him most! And most profits my own soul and I am beginning, only beginning, to know it.

Unwrapping more of His love in this world.

Act justly.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly with God!