Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 280
November 9, 2012
Links for 2012-11-08 [del.icio.us]
@ I Take Joy ... "This kingdom grows not by the influence of government, or the power of any one person, but by Love spreading from heart to heart so that slowly, the kingdom burns in a hundred, then a thousand, then a million hearts." This.
Love Poem No. 5
@ the beautiful due ... "if only you and I are... slow enough to take it."
Live-Stream
of the Desiring God's "God's Good Design in Disability"
Death-Defying
@ Tony Woodlief ... "I understood, maybe for the first time ever, that my cup overflows in the valley of the shadow." Yes.
November 8, 2012
Links for 2012-11-07 [del.icio.us]
@ Jennie Allen.... "But we all have to do this or truth becomes scarce and disciples become few." Yes, yes, yes. What She Said.
3 truths of personal growth
@ Simple Mom.... looking for mentor? to grow? This.
101 Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Ideas
... wonderful! Marking the calendar!
November 7, 2012
A {Christian} Family Thanksgiving Activity: The Thanks Giving Tree {Free Printable}
Leaves aren’t ever purely green and not everything is as it seems.
The kids and I walk through the orchard and November.
That’s what I tell the kids.
That all summer, the chlorophyll of the leaf, all that green, absorbs the sun and releases food and it this cycle of chlorophyll that cloaks the leaves’ pure colors.
Shalom kneels under the pear tree, picks herself a yellow leaf, gold for a pocket.
I finger the edge of a scarlet one.
“But come the fall of the year, come November — the chlorophyll ebbs. And the green dims.”
Shalom holds up an ember leaf.
“And there it is — the leaf’s true colors!”
Shalom whispers, bowed over her gilded leaf — “You mean this leaf was always this colour?”
And I nod.
All this brilliance, all this God glory — it is always here.
But life can blind and truth can hide in plain sight and the ways of God burn underneath everything.
Life has blinding cycles of its own — but our God is always blazing glory.
And w hen you whisper thanks to God — you glimpse the glory of God and pure grace colors your world.
And I pick up a pen to thank through the fall days.
And the dark ebbs and the shadows dim –
and all the trees and the thankful ignite with the true colours of the glorious now.
Make your own: The Thanks Giving Tree {Free Printable}
1. Print out The Thanks Giving Tree (this blazing print out of leaves will take a bit to download — several minutes, almost ten minutes here on the farm, but only two minutes for a friend in town. So… pour a cup of tea?)
2. Cut out all of the leaves. Hole punch each leaf. Slip a string through each hole.
3. Hang the leaves on a bouquet of branches in a container of your choice.
4. Each morning, pick one leaf, reflect on its verse and make the verse your prayer of thanksgiving back to God. Then set it at the base of The Thanks Giving Tree.
5. In the evening, return to the leaf and its verse and give thanks to God. And then jot down one gift you are grateful to God for on the back of the leaf.
Make giving thanks a daily habit — and daily wear joy!
6. (While it’s life-changing to cultivate a habit of thanksgiving over several weeks, life circumstances might alternatively have you jotting down thanksgiving for His gifts on all the leaves at one time, or, as a family, filling all the leaves during one family gathering.)
7. Or! Each morning, leave one of The Thanks Giving Tree leaves hanging somewhere, and on the back of the leaf, jot down why you are grateful for your spouse, your child, your co-worker, your neighbour. Use the Thanks Giving Tree to reach out and ignite your community with a radical revolution of gratitude! Joy! Dare!
Each day this month, I’ll be sharing one Thanks Giving Tree leaf on Facebook and Twitter and how we used that verse today! Join in with us! “Give thanks in the assembly!” Ps. 35:18
Related: 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful, Happier Kids
How Writing Down your Thanks is proven to make you 25% Happier!
And from our home to yours –
60 Devotionals for the whole holiday season of gifts — with space for you to write down the legacy of your own 1000 gifts:
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces
and One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
November 6, 2012
In the face of Unknowns: Electing to Trust
On the eve of all the unknowing,
when sitting and looking back over everything,
you could see it –
Somehow all of life’s failings are a failure to somehow trust God.
Light caught in the trees.
The trees stood in light. Stood in this quiet willingness to grow into the unknown.
And there, it comes in the stillness, comes like a light warming the wood and all the years —
There is unwavering peace today…
w hen an uncertain tomorrow…
is trusted to an unchanging God.
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-11-05 [del.icio.us]
I love these folks and Susie Larson and their radio programs that truly encourage on the hard days. Check out what Faith Radio is doing the whole month of November!
This story from Hurricane Sandy...
Oh. Yes. This.
A woman told me this story...
last week when we crossed paths at the Allume Conference, when I asked her if she'd met more of Christ in the place. And when she told me what God had done and how a man had gotten saved? I prayed she'd write the story --- so we too can rejoice with the angels. Share the message of Jesus!
The Daily Choice....
... and this family in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is making their choice. Humbled and convicted... and praying for all these families.
Memorizing Scripture
@ Challies... very encouraging: "God has not set up a Bible quiz to determine if you have all your verses memorized this week. God desires that you love his Word."
November 5, 2012
The Holiday that could become All of our Days — & change our lives
The woman I meet up on the concourse, she tells me she was done.
Done with the man and the ring and the vows, done with the kids, done with her life.
Her eyes are so large and fragile, hands trembling, the way your world can quake and break and the aftershocks rattle you and the stunned retelling. I touch her shoulder.
And she crumbles in and heaves, and heaves that counting blessings made her see blessings and she’s staying and staying alive and barren places can break with bloom.
I memorize her face and glory.
We are the broken and the bruised and the messed up and the unmasked, women meeting at a conference, women of faith, and turning quiet to pull up sleeves and show scars.
A woman murmurs at my ear over the din that her brother in law ran over his 13 month old daughter, and we don’t have to say anything, and hands find each other and lace and this world is right busted and tied up with the strings of His broken and offered heart.
And a gravelly voice speaks of cancer and a grave and a child whose name she wears around her neck, and we finger that name together and fiercely believe in a Father who knows and holds and cups like relief, like a lung, when we can’t breathe.
And the story of a stroke and a mother and depression that pinned to a bed and the dark that suffocated for decades and the pen that wrote His gifts, that opened the veil to His light.
And I tuck a lock of hair behind the ear, and listen to unlockings and how women are finding keys.
And then she stepped close, a woman who couldn’t lift her head, who hid her eyes, and she says it timid near my shoulder.
“I had six children when I sinned.” And I turn, wrap an arm around her shoulder, draw her in.
“I had an affair…” Her words snag and tear and I hold on to her as she starts to give way. “I got pregnant. And I couldn’t handle what I had done.”
I try to swallow, all my sins stuck and lodged and burning there in my throat. Oh, sister. The sobs wrack and we are two women caught in the act of living and sinning.
“And the day I was going for the abortion, a friend gave me this.” She nods her head towards that book with the nest on the cover.
“She gave it to me — and she said what I couldn’t handle… was actually a gift.” And I can hardly take this, have to look away, take my shoes off, tear my coat, beat my chest.
“And I read and I agreed with God and he is.”
And there on the screen of her phone – she offers this picture of a smiling baby boy.
And I reach out and hold his smile and it is holy and it is epiphany and it is hard –
What you think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift.
And I think of everything I have chaffed against and railed about and howled to the heavens and who am I to know what is best or not — but when you bow and surrender to the sovereignty of God then you are in the posture to receive all as a gift. I touch the pixels of that baby boy smiling.
Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle and he’s smiling, that miracle baby’s smiling.
What is beyond the redemption of God?
And I look up and around at all these women gathered here with their God-witnessing, all their pain-glistening eyes and courage-smiles and chins that still quake, and there it is — in all of them —
In Christ, thanksgiving is more than a holiday –
In Christ, thanksgiving is all of our days.
The living proof, the woman from Chicago and the sisters from Kansas City and the grandmother from Florida and the couple from Arkansas, they are the walking witnesses of His Word and why giving thanks isn’t a pollyanna game — but a powerhouse game-changer:
God asks us to give thanks in everything — because this is the way you live through anything.
It’s a dare to really live and I want it, all over again, I want it.
And the mama of the miracle that almost wasn’t, she smiles at me through tears, and we both blur and reach out and touch each other’s face – Giving thanks is life giving.
And we murmur it at the same time —
Thank you.
And He hears.
And everything that seems done and over revives again.
”Christian thanksgiving is the life of Christ in the heart, transforming the disposition and the whole character. Thanksgiving must be wrought into the life as a habit—before it can become a fixed and permanent quality.
We must persist in being thankful. Thanksgiving has attained its rightful place in us, only when it is part of all our days and dominates all our experiences.
Every day of our years should be a thanksgiving day.
He who has learned the Thanksgiving lesson, well has found the secret of a beautiful life.”
The trio that stir a holiday into becoming all of our days – that might change all our lives:
One Thousand Gifts
and counting more of the One Thousand Gifts
that never end… thanks for Christ who does it all, gives it all, #4537 – #4545:
The Farmer combining corn this morning …. piano playing filling this farmhouse on Monday … this story from Hurricane Sandy …. the women who shared their Only-God stories of thanksgiving with me at Women of Faith this weekend… the way God uses broken things … soul beautiful sisters in Christ.. .. #13 on NYTimes, God calling His people to make thanksgiving all of their days to change our lives… the exciting and practical things coming tomorrow… unexpected life from barren places … worship this weekend …. the big boys who met me at the door grinning… the whole congregation of His Body rising up in thanks to our God who can and does and will redeem everything… all is grace.
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
November 2, 2012
The Real Truth about the Real First Thanksgiving {Free Printable}
That field of beans west of the barn, it looked gaunt come end of October, bean pods all hanging like bony ribs.
Whenever the wind sighed, the whole field just rattled skinny.
That’s how my Dad always spoke of a railish man, that you could count his ribs.
Nothing in me wanted to count those beans, know the yield, from this spare field.
When the Farmer rolled the combine in and lowered the combined head to bring those beans in, I sat beside him, raised my voice to ask it above the working engine:
Is it possible that something that doesn’t look like anything — can still amount to anything?
The field, it was hard to even look at.
I’ve known a face in a mirror much like that.
“It isn’t much to look at, is it?”
The Farmer looks up from the combine’s steering wheel, looks across the field to the north.
“Weedy. And thin.”
The white of the sow thistle seeds mingle with the dust. This field had no rain in July and a man can’t make a sky give. He can just make the knees bend and the hands raise.
The harvest looked like a failure.
I’ve known this, been this, am this.
The story of the first thanksgiving —
the first time thanksgiving is ever mentioned in Scripture —
this is what we discover first about thanksgiving:
“And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings that one may offer to the LORD.
If he offers it for a thanksgiving,
then he shall offer with the thanksgiving sacrifice unleavened loaves mixed with oil, unleavened wafers smeared with oil, and loaves of fine flour well mixed with oil.
With the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving he shall bring his offering with loaves of leavened bread….”
The thanksgiving offering was part of the peace offering and that is the thing:
No one receives the peace of God without giving thanks to God.
Thankfulness is the deep, contented breath of Peacefulness.
Is this why He asks us to give thanks even when things look a failure? When there doesn’t seem much to give thanks for?
The beans rattle through the combine, the auger filling the bin with golden beans like bread rising slow.
There were ten offerings of bread in every Thank-offering of the Israelites.
The first were like crackers.
The second like wafers. These were known for their thinness.
This was the order of thanks.
The thanks began for the thin things, the wafer things that almost weren’t, and the way to give thanks for the people of God is first to give thanks for even the meager and unlikely.
Then it came, thanks for the leavened bread. Why leaven, yeast, that seen in Scripture as impure, unwanted, as part of the thanks-offering?
Authentic thanks is always for all things, because our God is a God kneading all things into a bread that sustains.
Paul gave “glory in tribulations” (Ro. 5:13) and took “pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake” (2 Cor. 12:10), and he knew that which didn’t look like anything good might yield good, all in the hand of a good God.
To bring the sacrifice of thanksgiving means to sacrifice your understanding of what is beneficial and thank God for everything because He is benevolent.
A sacrifice of thanks lays down our perspective and raises hands in praise anyways – always.
A sacrifice is by definition not an easy thing.
There is this:
We give thanks to God not because of how we feel – but because of Who He is.
“See it on the monitor?”
The Farmer points to the screen to the right of the combine’s steering wheel.
“See the numbers, how many bushels an acre? If you didn’t see the numbers – you’d never guess, would you? It’s yielding much more than it looks.” He’s shaking his head in happy wonder.
“Really? How can that be?”
The numbers on the screen defy the seemingly sparse, stunted crop seems and I’m laughing incredulous.
“I know! I know…” The Farmer smiles, glances down at the beans feeding in the combine head, one eye still watching number of bushels on the screen.
He who is grateful for little is given much laughter… and it’s counting the ways He loves, this is what multiplies joy.
The life that counts blessings discovers its yielding more than it seems.
Why don’t I keep an eye on the number of His graces?
Why don’t I want to know that even though it doesn’t seem like there’s been enough rain, He reigns and He is enough and the bounty is greater than it appears?
That the thin places might be the places closest to God and the skinny places might be fuller than they seem and who isn’t full with Christ?
“Look how many seeds were really hiding in this pod!”
Shalom calls to me walking back across the field. “Count them, Mama.”
“Yes.” I say. “Yes, let’s count.”
And there’s this counting the ribs of the field and graces fill unexpectedly and thanksgiving is always this path to inner peace and I see it –
How the Farmer waves to me from the harvest seat, his hand turned willingly up to the sky.
::
::
:
Free Printable for counting of thanks in November:
To print with darker nest …. and to print with lighter nest…
Oh, and stay tuned for this coming Monday! The most amazing practical project is coming! To take us and the whole family through every single glorious day of November and this season of gifts!
This devotional & the story of The Very First Thanksgiving is included in the new
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces.
For gift just you and this counting of thanks in the month of November –
with 60 Devotionals for the whole holiday season of gifts — and space for the legacy of your own 1000 gifts:
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces.
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
November 1, 2012
Happy November! {November Joy Dare}
Happy Blessed November!
BEST month yet?
Looking for all His good gifts!
{Crazy, eh? That recent studies conclude that keeping a gratitude gift list is *guaranteed* to increase your happiness by 25%? Who in the world doesn’t want 25% more happy? 
}
Print out for the fridge, dare the kids, use these prompts to look for His gifts & give Him thanks & be MUCH happier… Take the Joy DARE!
Click here to Print November’s Joy Dare
Why bother?
It’s habits that can imprison you and it’s habits that can free you and when thanks to God becomes a habit, so joy in God becomes your life.
Maybe a life needs change over and over again — that constant turning to God? Not so much new month resolutions but revolutions.
And why bother keeping a gratitude list of His gifts?
Because those who keeping a gratitude list:
1. Have a relative absence of stress and depression. (Woods et al., 2008)
2. Make progress towards important personal goals (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
3. Report higher levels of determination and energy (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
4. Feel closer in their relationships and desire to build stronger relationships (Algoe and Haidt, 2009)
5. Increase your happiness by 25% — (Who wouldn’t want a quarter more happiness!) (McCullough et al., 2002)
Who doesn’t want all that?
Just three gifts a day.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
“All these years it’s been utterly pointless to try to wrench out the spikes of discontent.
Because that habit of discontentment, it can only be driven out by hammering in iron that is even sharper —
The sleek pin of gratitude.” …. ~ {One Thousand Gifts}
Like you can hear it across the fields and in the hand of every heart desperately seeking change — –
all these pens held like hammers to ring in a new month!
And all this joy.
HOW TO ENTER November’s GIVEAWAY:
Each day of November, either share your gifts on on Twitter {label with #1000gifts #JoyDare so we can find you!}, or with us in the gratitude community at Facebook , or on Pinterest (#1000gifts).
Each day, 3 people will who share their gifts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest will be randomly selected & entered into a drawing for JOY BASKET: a gift card @ Amazon {100$} & {signed copies of One Thousand Gifts, the photographic gift book
, the DayBrightner, and the family gratitude journal} Give thanks to Him in the assembly!
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
:
Related: 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful Kids
Count three gifts a day, 1000 gifts in 2012 (and be entered to win the NikonD90 camera?)
Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!
Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-10-31 [del.icio.us]
@ The High Calling... "But God... He does not condemn my days as good or bad...He makes each day for living, and this morning was no different." Beautiful hope.
the servant behind this blog repainting
@ Contemplate Design -- These folks? I cannot recommend Ted and Annie highly enough. Thoughtful. Patient. Smart. *Prayerful* My heartfelt thanks to truly amazing folks...
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