Giving Thanks

I wanted to share some more words that spoke to me from "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  I have had a running current in my own mind of how do I want to live this life here, this side of heaven.  This came up also in our small group this week, I want to know Christians (myself included) who are living a full of freedom life.  I often look around and all I see in struggle.  I want to believe life can me more...all the time?  No....sometimes?  Yes!  Sometimes it is like when you look around for a good marriage and you are hard pressed to find one.  You want to see people who are living victoriously, that something is different when you belong to Jesus, a life changed...a full life.

Ann writes, "Which road through this brief land?  What is all most important?  How to live the fullest life here that delivers into the full life ever after?  .....-give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?  Ann talks about how she saw a book about the 1,000 places to see before you die.  She wonders if she has to see all those places to be fulfilled and can she find it in her life, right where she is..."Isn't it here?  The wonder?  Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it?  Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur?  All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me."

I know I have lived in that space of wanting to experience the fullest "whatever" or have the "right" experience or the "moment" that marks.  Often it is in the everyday, I find the "most".

Ann explores how Jesus spent his last hours on earth.  He broke bread and gave thanks ("eucharisteo").  "The root word of eucharisteo is charis meaning "grace" and it also includes the word, Joy!  She asks the question, "Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?  As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.  The joy wonder could be here.  The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."

She continues, "Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude was the fall (humanity's discontent with all that God freely gives) then salvation must be intimately related to eucharisteo, the giving of thanks.  Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.  To participate in His death with our own daily dying and give thanks for it.  She talks about the story in the Bible of the only leper who came back to thank Jesus and He says, "Your faith has made you well."  But he had already been healed.  "Sozo (greek word for saved thee)  Sozo means salvation, complete wholeness.  Jesus came that we might love life to the full."  The leper's faith had saved him, "And the leper's faith was a faith that said thank you...Our very saving is associated with our gratitude.  Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ."  Giving thanks in everything "prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that enstranges us from Him.  And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends; thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of salvation being fully worked our in our lives." 

I am still trying to work this out in my own head and heart, but it feels important.  Gratitude...a basis for Joy, a full life. 

Found these cutest small Mason drinking glasses with paper straws!  Love them!  The paper straws did not last, but were cute!  Just love when I find something I love!