Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 293
August 2, 2012
August 1, 2012
Happy August! Best Way to Begin:
Really — Take the crazy Joy Dare!
Print it out for the fridge {and the kids} : use these prompts to give thanks for these gifts from God.
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}
If I never cease working on the the habit of good food, good exercise, good time management — why ever lessen the habit of our grateful thanks to a good God?
It’s like you can hear it in the woods —
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.
:
Related: 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful Kids
Click here to print out August’s Joy Dare Put it on the fridge! Dare the Kids! And begin this month-- right!
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!
HOW TO ENTER August’s GIVEAWAY:
Each day of August, 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?
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-07-31 [del.icio.us]
have you thought about becoming one of these? Really.
I read this Olympic story aloud to the kids...
... what an inspiration!
July 31, 2012
Tears & Answering the Problem of Evil
‘Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world.
Because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down. The Word has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, “I know. I know.”
The passion on the page is a Person, and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea but the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain.”
On Focus on the Family radio yesterday, author and evangelical theologian, Randy Alcorn mentioned One Thousand Gifts, the “problem” of goodness in a world, and of evil and suffering and how to cling to Christ in the midst of troubles.
Mr. Alcorn offered on Focus:
“This is the greatness of thinking about thanksgiving… like Ann Voskamp and her One Thousand Gifts — I like these books that are encouraging people to make your lists… Think of all these good things that God has done. Because when we think of the problem of evil and suffering, let’s remember the world is full of goodness — even a fallen world, under the curse, it’s amazing how many good things God has surrounded us with.”
To those reeling from horrors and in unspeakable pain, Mr. Alcorn gently offers, “Jesus Christ is the only answer that is bigger than all our questions…”
Related Post: The Problem of Evil? The Answer and the Problem of Good
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-07-30 [del.icio.us]
of the Olympics --- when they sang this hymn. Beautiful truth.
For while you are on the couch watching Olympics...
@ NYTimes ... this encourages even aging me! ;)
Look to the good -- look to heroes, says grieving father - CNN.com
@ CNN ... "He just really kind of stood out from the other kids. He was always smiling."
Qualified for the prize
@ WORLDmag.com .... "Seven U.S. Olympic athletes hope to excel in London while giving glory to God"
July 30, 2012
The 1 Thing You Have Got to Know… When You are Looking for Answers
The day our 6th child is born, a straight line wind rips through and tears trees in the woods straight out of the ground.
We name the baby born in a storm, we name her Shalom.
Her name means peace in Hebrew.
We name her Shalom and she is born the day a storm mangles all our countryside, tears the roofs off a half a dozen barns, and Shalom means wholeness – and what if she never finds that in her storms —wholeness and peace and rest?
When we gather the kids to introduce them to their baby sister, our firstborn son, Caleb, looks up at his dad and says what every parent of a newborn wants to hear when they announce a baby’s name: “You’re kidding right?”
What? Kidding over a Hebrew name? Or kidding that us Voskamps aren’t known for shalom? Known for wholeness and completeness and peace?
Ah, but the boy knows it and I readily confess it – I have been known to wrestle hard with God.
My lips may have said yes to God’s grace of the Messiah – but my life has said No to God’s gift of this moment – the laundry basket dumped in the mudroom, the brothers bickering over a bike, the soup burning on the stove.
I may want Christ – but to be crucified?
I may want to be in Christ – but to be inconvenienced?
I may want to be rescued – but to be refined?
My word to God, it has been a divided word– Yes and No.
And heart divided against Him cannot stand. And she who lives with fork tongue to God, she pierces her own heart.
I have known storms – and haven’t let peace birth in my heart.
The wind has blown hard. And I have not moved.
But every moment my inner heart is saying No to the God of the universe – I am say saying Yes to the enemy of my soul. We are always saying yes to Someone.
Shalom, our peace child, peace born in a storm — when she wasn’t quite 8 months old, Shalom wakes one night in our bed in this wailing cry, hair all damp and curled to her forehead in fear.
So I draw all her wracking sobs up close.
Anxiously, her fingers find my face. Hardly catching her breath between sobs, she brushes her fingertips along my lips, touches my cheek. Like fingertips tentatively feeling along the embossing of Braille, again and again, she lightly reads my face. All she needs to touch is my face —
And I keep whispering to her assurance: “Shalom… Shalom…”
And there it is in the dark: Yeth?
And I sit right up in bed. Is that Shalom talking? So I whisper it again: Shalom?
And this little bundle pulls herself up and she cups my face and she says, “Yeth?”
Just a breathy, whispery – YETH.
In the middle of a very dark room, she says her very first word — YES. Shalom, peace, the child born in a storm – her first word is YES.
She needed no holding, no rocking, nothing else to fill her.
Just to feel for a face. Just to feel all this love. That was enough for her to say Yes.
Peace isn’t the absence of the dark. Peace is the assurance of God’s presence in the midst of the dark. And when we want peace – we only need to say yes to God’s purposes.
The boys are scuffling. I have no idea where my wallet is. I may or may not be losing a bit of my mind.
And I look around at the counters and the laundry and I can’t find any peace because I forget Peace is a Person, not a place. And I can feel it in me – my yes to the enemy with all these voices in my head: “You are such a loser! You are such a mess! You are such a failure.”
And it comes surer, right in the midst of the domestic dark, this divine doxology –
In Me you are not wrecked. You are rescued.
In Me you aren’t a mess. You are made new.
In Me you aren’t ever a loser – you are lavished with love.
Why it so hard to believe what He says about you? Why it so hard to say yes to His yes to you?
Why not say Yes to the way He loves you in every Moment?
A life contemplating the love of Christ is the catalyst to acting out the love of Christ.
And if we want more Yes to God actions in our life — we need more Yes to God contemplations in our life.
Yes to the blessings and yes to the ugly and yes to the beautiful and yes to the love and to His will and to the saving sovereignty of God in this moment who can’t stop serenading with His grace. In our dark, just to keep whispering our breathy, child-like yes.
In the Old Testament, the word “to will” is abah. “To will – to intend, to choose” — to decide your yes — abah. To make your will agree with God’s Will – that is how we say yes to God.
The Word abah, it’s there in Isa 19:20:
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.
If you are abah, willing and obedient – if you say yes to God – you shall eat of the land. There is no yield in our lives, until there is Yes to the Lord in our hearts.
Abah – “to will” – it literally means “to breathe after” or “to long for.”
We are saying yes – to whatever we are breathing after.
What do I breathe after? Some kind of success? Some kind of status? Some kind of Pinterest loveliness?
Why doesn’t my soul pant after God like a deer panteth for the water?
My first word in the dark, in the storm – it could be that word that brings peace: Yes, God – Yes.
Because this is the thing:
God names Himself — -and He names Himself that which is the sound of our own breathing. He names Himself that which is our very breath.
God names Himself that which is to be our very will — our very yes to Him.
As long as we are breathing – our lives are meant to say Yes to God.
It could be like that:
Our hearts are like water and the Holy Spirit is like the wind – and at the slightest breathing of the Word of God, the whole of a life might respond.
The whole of a life can become the breath of Yes to God.
These moving, expanding circles of obedience and surrender and yes to God —
reaching further and further out into the world for the glory of His Son.
…. and my own yes to God — more of His endless, One Thousand Gifts … thanks be to God for all of these blessings:
hot chocolate around a campfire {#4147}
sweet cherries! {#4148}
a younger sister who shows me how {#4149}
finding that lost ring! {#4150}
#10 on the NYTimes, 46 weeks… thankfulness could change the world in Jesus’ name {#4151}
son home from serving at Bible camp! {#4153}
two more days in July {#4154}
picking sun-warm zucchini {#4155}
this amazing song we just keep listening to … {#4156}
{Please consider clicking off music slider just below top nav bar to hear a truly unforgettable song. RSS readers can view video here… }
Take July’s Joy Dare? Make it a month of Freedom from grumbling!
Thanks is a word that takes us before God and into the joy of our true homeland…
Print it for the fridge and dare everyone in the family to find these 3 gifts from His hand each day:
Click here to print July’s Joy Dare! Put it on the fridge! Dare the Kids! And begin this week — this month-- right!
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!
HOW TO ENTER JULY’S GIVEAWAY:
Each day of July, 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
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 a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 29, 2012
Links for 2012-07-28 [del.icio.us]
@ Wall Street Journal.... now this could kickstart some great conversations about options and what an education could look like.
July 28, 2012
weekends are for bending for the good
Creative Inspiration for the Weekend : Print out this Travel Photo Checklist – perfect for any daytripping or vacations on the summer calendar! Have you checked out these 8 Tips for Better Vacation Photos?} And oh – don’t forget to take one of these for the album (It’s never too late to begin!) Too fun!
This inspires me to chronicle for our family better.
{You are living these 7 Habits of Creativity and making happy time everyday to be creative, yes?}
Easy Kitchen Love for the Weekend : Don’t let summer slip by without making this just once — very easy and family memorable.
Olympics for the Weekend : What would the Olympics be without these amazing, free printables for the family. Enjoy and cheer loud and make it fun!
Organization for the Weekend : Before the fall starts in full swing – this might be the weekend to make this the best year ever: 10 Tips for the Best Command Centrals for a Busy Home – free printables included. Might be the best hour on a Saturday invested all summer?
And then right after just a bit of cleaning — Print this out for the Fridge (click download in the right corner) because you need this for the last few weeks of summer. (you can take it down 40 for 20 minutes when you do your cleaning routine — and when the time goes. That’s it! You’re done! And hand the printable back up on the fridge and smile!)
Clean on the Weekend : 3 of the simplest steps for cleaning your hardwood floors. And this tip — two tea bags and be prepared for sheen! Trying one of these 6 floor cleaners Now even I can do this…and I love the creativity thrown in with this too!
Make a Fun Kid Memory on the Weekend : I have always wanted to do this — stack pillows up in the back of a truck and go stargazing somewhere? Know a friend with a truck? This could be the weekend to make a memory — only so many summers left! And we’re printing out these free printables to boot!
Summer Inspiration (Only a few weeks left!) for the Weekend : How are you doing with this? (isn’t that beautiful and inspiring?) Jump in right now and make your own for the weeks remaining and make the most of every opportunity!
Truth on the Weekend : My friend, Christine Caine, and I are thrilled to be serving together with Women of Faith in Des Moines, August 24 — join us? (she’ll be the enflamed one, and I’ll be the one with the knees knocking hard). Our hearts are beating hard with Christ and this — (Christine @ Passion):
Fire in our bones like this:
{Please consider clicking off music slider just below top nav bar to hear a truly unforgettable message. RSS readers can view video here… }
Worship for the Weekend : Shaun Groves on his latest CD Third World Symphony – echoing Christine:
May the grace and truth of our Father surprise you all over again this weekend, friends…
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 27, 2012
The Light We Need to See Everyone In
Been praying this week for Amber and Seth Haines and their little Titus. I’ve been memorizing Sermon on the Mount, all of Matthew 5-7, with these earnest folks (and a whole community of memorizers!), and God’s got us on a journey. Seth, a lawyer, a mighty fine writer, good husband and praying father to four future men — he guest posts here with a few needful words in these part this morning:
It was a warm west-Tennessee day.
The humidity beaded on my brow, so I pulled the ball cap from my head and wiped away the sweat. There was a row of green pole beans laced with purple striations. I was in Stratham’s field.
“Rattlesnake beans,” he said. ”At least, that’s what mama used to call them on account of the fact that rattlesnakes shaded under the thick lower foliage. That, and when they dry on the vine they rattle a bit in the hulls.”
“Which ones do I pick, Strat?”
Stratham held his thumb and forefinger at a span of about three inches. ”Ye big or so, but if you get ‘em a bit smaller I reckon it don’t matter much,” he said. ”My lady likes younger beans, more tender. But the way I see it, a meatier bean is more filling.”
Strat grabbed the handle of his five-gallon bucket and started down the row behind me. Each row was thirty feet long with trellising made of six-foot iron t-posts strung with rusty double loop wire. The rows formed a sort of faux wall allowing both the allusion of privacy and the intimacy of conversation.
It was a verdant confessional booth.
Stratham and I worked in silence for a few minutes, and I felt words gathering in him like a slow southern storm in late August. Finally he broke.
“Last week Brother Smith brought the lesson at church. It was Father’s day.” Strat stopped abruptly and I could hear thrashing in the beans behind me.
“Daggum Japanese beetles!” he exclaimed as he shooed them with an old handkerchief. He continued. ”Smith said that family ought to see a man less for what he is, and more for what the man wants to be. Said that’s called grace. I reckon he’s right.“
I found my own covey of Japanese Beetles mating under the shade of the rattlesnake bean leaves. I gathered two between my fingers and squished them.
“I’ve done some things that don’t make me proud,” he said flatly.
He didn’t expound, but I knew Stratham’s story. Knew there’d been things that’d shamed his wife and family. ”I’ve moved on,” Stratham said, “and I hope some of folks have grace enough to see that.”
I grabbed a young bean from the vine and ate it raw. Strat continued with his bean field confessional.
“When I was young, I went to church three times a week and memorized all the right passages. I learned apologetics and the art of doctrinal debate. I went to a Christian school, married my Christian sweetheart, and started my Christian family in the church. I judged a good deal, divided doctrines mercilessly.”
Stratham sighed heavy and said, “I know I gave you a real hard time early on.”
“It’s okay, Strat,” I said. Truth was, we hadn’t talked about our doctrinal differences in years. Not since his fall from grace. Not since he was marked with the tenderness of the penitent.
I heard Strat’s knees creak as he squatted to pick the lower beans.
“Once you fall apart, things just look different, I guess. We all need folks who see the ‘could be’ or the ‘want to’ in us. We all need grace. We all need Jesus, friend of harlots. And I want to be that kind of friend, too.”
I heard the hollow thud of Strat’s bucket being set on an old cinder block, and I knew Strat had exhausted the conversation.
He’d purposed this for some time, I thought; now he’d said his piece and that was that. I heard Stratham wrestling a bit with the earth behind me, heard a root system come loose.
“Found a young vine that never made it,” he said. ”Sometimes it’s hard to figure what stunts growth, but I think this one’s had its roots choked out by some gypsum weed.“ I thought of the old parables, how new parables were scattered all across these bean fields.
I thought of dying seeds, the wheat and the tares, the prodigal son. I thought of Stratham, how he met Jesus at the business end of grace.
I picked a large bean and examined the purple striations down its belly. ”I like the look of these beans,” I said.
“The markings give it character.”
Stratham didn’t respond, but instead muttered about them one last time under his breath.
It was a warm west-Tennessee day. I was in Stratham’s field.
And he was the harvest.
.
.
~ Seth Haines, friend of Jesus and of the sinners made saints
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
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