ONE THOUSAND GIFTS (Voskamp): Part 3

PART 3: Devotions 21-30

ONE THOUSAND GIFTS: A Devotional Finding Everyday Graces

Ann Voskamp (Zondervan, 2012)

MONDAY, October 6  Curative Grace

Numbers 21:9 MSG

So Moses made a snake of fiery copper and put it on top of a flagpole. Anyone bitten by a snake who then looked at the copper snake lived.

• First the eyes. Always first, the inner eyes. Looking is the love.  Looking is the evidence of the believing. (AV)
• How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God.
• How we look determines how we live….IF we live.

“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.” (AW Tozer, In Pursuit of God)

            Hurting? Grieving? Look for the gratitude bandaid – thankfulness and acknowledgement, recognition of all God-Gifts.  It is said that pain, depression, and sorrow can best be ‘cured’ by turning one’s thoughts outward – to an appreciation and attention to others, to the needs of others, and to a heart set on gratitude for what IS good. 

TUESDAY, October 7  Perceiving Grace

Matthew 6:22-23 MSG

Your eyes are windows into your body.  If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.

If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar.

If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!

• Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy, and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?  (AV)

            We who have eyes to see perceive the world through our vision.  God-gifts of grace are the glasses, the magnifying lenses, the prisms that take the unpleasant hardships and allow us to see them in a new light: the light of God.  Poop on the sidewalks? Give thanks the wildlife is flourishing!  Rain clouds that spoil the view? The thirsty earth is quenched and fire danger lowered!  Let the prism show a new angle of sight, a new perception! 

WEDNESDAY, October 8  Hunting Grace

Psalm 23:5-6

My cup overflows.  Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the home of the Lord forever. 

• Have vessel.  Now must find beauty. 
• Empty containers can make us seekers, hunters of glory.  I need to find grace beauty to fill the emptiness.  Beauty, bought with attention.  (AV)

            Voskamp writes of having to find a vase when flowers were brought inside.  Then she bought four matching empty vases to be filled constantly with wildflowers, grasses, branches of Creation.  She sent the children out to hunt for God-glory.  Our journal to record the graces is like the empty vessel waiting to be filled. 

            When the empty is visible, it makes us seekers, hunters of glory with which to fill the emptiness.  We actively search.  We want to record.  Is our life somewhat the same?  Empty or meaningless until we can fill it with the glory of God, with daily reminders of God-with-us, God-IN-us.  May I fill my vessel this day. 

THURSDAY, October 9  Beautiful Grace

Psalm 27:4

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

            To gaze in the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in his temple. 

• See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it.  Someone is behind it.  Beauty Himself completes.
• God within is the one seeing God without. (AV)

What more you ask, do we want?  Ah, but we want so much more – something the books on aesthetics take little notice of.  But the poets….know all about it.  We do not want merely to see beauty, though.  God knows, even that is beauty enough.  We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bath in it, to become part of it.”  (CS Lewis)

            It isn’t hard to write this section as I spend the week surrounded by the wonder and beauty of God’s Creation.  This is ONE of God’s temples.  It is easy to see the face of God in moonrise and sunset, the intricate formations of Hot Springs, the elk bugling, and aspen colors.  It is harder and perhaps more important to seek that same beauty in the everyday dirty of life – the painful relationships, the chaos of schedules, the hurry, etc.  Everywhere is God’s temple, and the beauty of our Creator is there if we but have eyes to search for it. 

FRIDAY, October 10  Bridge Grace

Psalm 136:4 NLT

Give thanks to Him who alone does mighty miracles.  His faithfulness endures forever. 

• Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.  Remembering frames up gratitude.  Gratitude lays out the planks of trust.  I can walk the planks – from known to unknown – and know:  He holds. 
• Remembering is an act of thanksgiving.  It is thanksgiving that shapes a theology of trust; the Israelites bear witness and I see. 
• What did Jesus say at the Last Supper? Remember me. 

            We have a family saying ‘Misery makes memories’ whenever things go awry or not as planned.  But misery also allows us to trust God in ways we might not otherwise.  Our memories form bridges to the past and we recall the thousands of times God has carried us across.  When we give thanks we are continuing to build those bridges.  Every entry in my journal is another part of the bridge – a passage we can walk without fear.  I write this morning as Orion shines bright in the sky and the moonlight dances on the mountain.  God is good.  All the time. 

SATURDAY, October 11  Hard Grace

Philippians 3:10

I want to know Christ.  Yes, to know the power of his resurrection, and participate in his sufferings, to become like him in his death. 

• If you haven’t lost Christ, nothing is ever lost. 
• Eucharisteo is how Jesus….showed us to transfigure all things – take the pain that is given, ‘give thanks’ for it, and transform it into a joy that fills all emptiness. 
• The hard discipline is to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty.  (AV)

            How often have I yet included the ‘ugly’, the painful or sorrowful, on my list of God-graces. Yet these are the very places, the dry hotsprings of my soul, that demand the thanks to transfigure!  Until I thank God for them, they cannot be changed.   Thank God for cold fingers!  I am HERE in the beauty of sunlight hitting the grove of pines!  Thank God for inconvenience and suffering…and look to see transformation from them! 

SUNDAY, October 12  This-Moment Grace

Psalm 103:15, 17

The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field….

But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,

            And his righteousness with their children’s children. 

• Giving thanks to God is what ushers one into the very presence of God.  And this is why He asks us to always give thanks. 
• Be grateful for every moment we are given.
• Today is the last like this.  This place, this people, this moment – it will never again be JUST like this.  Cause my eyes to see everything in my life afresh.  I may not pass by here again.  Now is not a forever grace, but amazing grace.

            When I am surrounded by the glory of Creation, it is easy to get a geological sense of time.  This moment will last hundreds of years, because things so slowly change in nature.  But a visit to Yellowstone is different:  the hot springs come and go, bubbling today, not tomorrow.  One geyser erupted 50 times one year and only once the following!  When we visited the Old Man in the Mountain in NH in 1998, we said that nose will hang on for another hundred years.  On our return last year, we found it had fallen in 2005!! 

            Savor time spent with friends and family.  Make time for connections.  Act upon impulses that build bridges. Stop and smell the roses!   We can’t wait for tomorrow.  We must appreciate and give thanks for all the God-graces we find This-Moment, TODAY. 

MONDAY, October 13 Small Grace

Matthew 18:4 MSG

Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.” (G.K. Chesterman)

• When I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness, I have never felt sadness, only burgeoning wonder. (AV)

            Stand outside on a clear dark night and gaze at the universe.  We feel small.  Incredibly small.   But we are filled with the glory of a God who is that big, yet cares for the small.  Our perspective is clear.  Yet too often we live with the self-centeredness of a small world built around ourselves.  We try to feel big, but our perspective is off.  We are so empty. 

            Oh to see the world as a child again.  To give thanks, to laugh and giggle, to wonder, and to appreciate all that there is on a level we often fail to see as adults.  Small grace isn’t really small at all.  It is the abundant grace that comes when we think small, when we perceive as a child.   

TUESDAY, October 14  Humble Grace

Matthew 5:5 MSG

“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

• Eucharisteo makes the knees the vantage point of a life.
• Expectations kills relationships – especially with God.  That’s what a child doesn’t have – this whole edifice of expectation.  Without expectation, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment? 
• Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing – and are filled. Surprise! 
• This is the way the small live.  Everyday.  Humbly.  With surprise.  Humbly. With Joy.(AV)

            Again, we are talking perspective here.  A child sees the world from a different vantage point.  I like Voskamp’s line about the knees providing this altered state.  Putting ourselves into constant prayerful thanksgiving gives us such a perspective – that of a child, that of humility.

            Expectations.  I had never really considered this angle before.  But to approach life as a child often means sans preconceived notions and the edge that experience produces.  If we can say thanks for it all, we have no expectations to be met, and therefore no disappointments.  God does not disappoint IF we come to God in that attitude of gratitude. 

            I expected to work for Habitat today.  We are not due to office issues.  Disappointed? Yes.  But now, I shall approach the day saying, ‘Where can I find God’s blessings in today?’  I’ll be on the lookout!