Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 312

What's Real Success & Kathie Lee Gifford & One Thousand Gifts

A beautiful homeschooling mama invites me to come have lunch with her and her friend in New York City.

I wear all black.

Pull on my black boots.

And in my black boots –

This armour — this crazy pair of handknit rainbow-striped socks.

Sometimes you have to wear His promises to remember to keep walking.

I'm not going to lie: My knees trembled. But when  you're shod in the gospel, that prism of hope, you just keep taking the next step and you don't let anything keep you.  

The next wild leap of faith, right there at Rockefeller Center, down between 5th and 6th Avenue.

Emilie meets me on the corner, out in front of NBC studios.

She is wearing pink and a smile even warmer. I shake her daughters' hands, Lindsay and Annie, and I nod and say I always wanted to be an Annie, but I was meant to be just a plain Ann wearing black and her rainbow socks.

Emilie says we'll have lunch, Emilie and Lindsay and Annie and their friend and this farm girl, after their friend finishes up her morning work.

We'll just watch her friend finish up her show from a quiet corner?

I like quiet corners.

It's only when a make-up artist brushes my shiny chin that I get confused?

When a sound man looks for a place to clip a microphone on all my black.

When Emilie's dear friend, Kathie Lee Gifford, leans close to say, "Honey, you're hiding behind your hair and we want to see that you and all that joy!"

That's when I realize this could look different than what I was thinking?

The whole time I'm praying that I don't look like the deer-caught-in-headlights like I feel.

Did you know that your heart can sing that quietly anywhere — "Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God my Savior!"

Kathie Lee holds up One Thousand Gifts and a bit of my heart between those covers and she talks about how God's changed her as she read the pages and from that corner where the camera is, it's true, I may or may not have been shaking in my boots –

But I know what's in those boots and whose promises cover me and I smile straight ahead anyways…

{Consider pausing music by clicking the slider directly under the header? If reading in a reader or via email, click here to view the clip of a farm girl and Kathie Lee on the Today Show? }

After Kathie Lee makes us laugh and blush and clap –

We all slip away for lunch at Neary's and Noreen meets us at the door with her accent and these shining Irish eyes.

Kathie Lee's been having lunch here for 23 years and all the regulars are beautifully greyed and worn through to the polish and the place could be on the backstreet of any small town in America — or on the green island. "It's just a bit of Ireland in New York — a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Kathie Lee waves to Jimmy coming in the door and I pull up rainbow socks in my boots, the riches of His presence the gold to be had anywhere.

Lambchops, Kathie Lee tells us to order the lambchops, to eat them with our fingers and get the spinach too. She'll pass out the toothpicks at the end. Emilie winks across the table at me.

We grab hands, sisters in a circle, and pray before the meal. Kathie Lee praying for Annie and Lindsay and Emilie and for us to walk in truth and who we are in Christ and not to let the enemy steal our joy. And she thanks the Lord for Noreen bringing out our plates. Noreen blushes, thanks her for prayers, and there is gold in this.

Emilie and Kathie Lee ask about kids.

Ask about pigs and fields and we talk about Jesus in center of culture and clinging to grace and praying for the gift of being broken and becoming the gift and steeping in Scripture to know who we are and the best color for walls and boys shooting potato spitballs and the sovereignty of God and the vocation of motherhood and beauty from ashes. It was a wondrously real and long lunch.

There were tears. There were even longer prayers again and squeezed hands. And Kathie Lee did pass around the toothpicks at the end.  There's something gloriously real and honest about picking your teeth with friends.

Kathie Lee looked over at me, her mouth full of "The Doctor's Brushsticks" and her eyes all glinting happy, "We'll count these toothpicks as gifts too, don't you think, girls?"

And we all laugh too loud and  when we take what we've been given and call it grace, this picks out all the grit in between and all is grace.  

I saw it later, after Emilie and Annie and Lindsay and Kathie Lee had all hugged and we'd all waved this lingering, laughing goodbye.

Saw it somewhere near the Rockefeller Center and far from the farm, somewhere near 7th Avenue, a sign lit up with that one word over and over again:

"Gifts"

I believe that, right down to the toe-end of me — that His grace is everywhere, written right into the walls of this world.

And that gift sign, it hung right across the street from a billboard that read "How to Succeed".

That is the thing, to forget all the neon facade of everything else. That is the only real success, to do what we are made for:

Man's only successful end is to glorify God wherever he is and to enjoy him for ever — His grace upon gifts upon laying low grace.

Back home on the farm, the sun sets here across the fields.

I pull off my boots, put on my old Birks and read stories to a toothless kid, help a boy finish up the next page of math, wash the dishes, light falling in long lengths down the wall.

The phone rings and I reach over a boy fallen asleep on my shoulder, book in hand, and it Kathie Lee and she says she just wanted to call. Call to whisper one word.

Thank you.

And I smile and whisper it with her, thank you –  all that really is real in this one spinning world.

Glory to Him on the lips —

and His promises in neon rainbow hope right there at the feet.

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Related:

Because Saying Thank You can Change the World

Why You Really have Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Why it's Worth it to Get out of Your Comfort Zone

Kathie Lee first sharing One Thousand Gifts as her Favorite thing

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

 

 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!}

Why Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Do not let anything keep you –

not anything —

from flinging out of that sagging comfort zone,

and right into the streets, eyes and mouth full of His wonder,

to pant it in the marketplace

the back alleys, the front fields,

across the crackling wires

 

that you have seen Him, yes — you have seen the light —

and with these very eyes,

and you hear it even now,

how the rocks cry out

and you cry too, this stammering it

into every willing ear

that you opened your eyes one day and ran right into all His glory

and He saves and He kisses wounds and He serenades

and Beauty has branded you,

marked you with awe

and awe is why you grab the pen, and Beauty is why you scratch it down,

and all His lighting glory is why you muzzle the voices that say

you can't or shouldn't or mustn't,

because He is your blaze and He is your burn and and you cannot be muzzled because

what can keep you from telling once the eyes have seen?

 

Could there be anything greater than this,

the bearing witness

to the glory sighting?

 

Stand and give testimony.

 

Because this is the holy, blazing thing:

you cannot

not.

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(on why I get up early and do the crazy thing that I am doing today and oh, will tell you about later (will you pray for me today?), on why  I blog nearly daily though I am not brave and I stutter words, why I write though simply, speak though knees knock, snap a shutter though unskilled, and keep, keep, keep writing down the gifts… because how can one not bear witness when having glimpsed the beauty of the glory of God?)

An offering of thanks… the bearing witness to His wonder and ways… #3220 – #3230 of One Thousand Gifts

… color and paintbrushes and canvases and kid art everywhere

… Hope singing hymns loud and lovely while baking

… chocolate icing everywhere

… not making blessings into burdens

… kids gathered on our bed, talking and telling stories of the day, us together, just here

… waking to his arm pulling me close

… feeling fear and just taking this wild leap of faith anyways

… {only the quietest murmuring, #6 and 29 weeks and when we are weakest, He is strong}

… ironing boys' shirts

… the happiness of this! (Are you joining us?)

… washing the kitchen floor on Saturday morning

… turning in the lane on a dark and blustery night

… looking for glimpses of His light everywhere

"When I met Christ, I felt that I had swallowed sunshine."  ~E. Stanley Jones

Unspeakable, unending thanks be to God…

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Take The JOY DARE for February– and Count 1000 Gifts in 2012 (maybe winning the NikonD90 camera would be a gift too?)

Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!

Share the Dare?

{Download to print here}

{P.S.: Some were wondering where/how to chronicle their #1000gifts in 2012? Any way that works best for you:

in a private journal, with the free app, on your blog and join us in linking up here on the blog every Monday, on the free Year of Graces calendar, or on facebook or twitter (#1000gifts). I'll be sharing thanks to God each day, Lord willing, on my personal facebook page and on the One Thousand Gifts facebook page – the community there is profoundly encouraging. You are more than welcome to join us! And yes, we will post a new Joy Dare Calendar here on the blog, the first of every month, Lord willing — you can use the Joy Dare Calendar for each month — or not at all.

The point is? Just count any 3 gifts a day — to count 1000 gifts in a year. That's all. Any way that works for you! Just count your blessings!

And yes – we'll be updating the blog with more information about the draw for the Nikond90 camera for those who complete the dare and count 1000 gifts in 2012! Open our eyes, Lord, Open our eyes! The Whole Earth is fully of Your Glory! }

Free Printables : 3 Ways to Find Joy this week

1. A Year of Graces {A Free 12 Month Gratitude Calendar} Click to print here

 

2. Count all His Gifts Wherever You Are: {One Thousand Gifts Free App}:

Click here for the free #1000gifts app : The gift of joy for a friend? Print this card about the free app for a friend

3. 1 Paper = 1 Week of Joy

Tuck 1 sheet of paper in a pocket & jot down 7 gifts for 7 days:

(perfect booklet to cultivate the habit of the joy hunt for kids)

(folding instructions for booklet here)

 

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!}

What to do when Life's Dented & Banged Up

It only seems canned,

like that dented tin you pull off the markdown shelf,

this life

tucking in cotton sheets, chopping onions,

clipping socks to the line with wooden pins

grooved grey by sun and wind and spinning earth —

and there are days, the drowsy ones,

that I blithely buy it,

pay my dollar ninety nine and think

that none of this is shockingly cosmic,

not a quest, not one wild crusade for

the holy grail that has to be found before

time winds down, pops a spring,

ceases here.

 

Really what I keep doing is searching the shelves for grace elsewhere,

for some of that good stuff somewhere else,

that a smiling salesperson is handing out for free

at the end of aisle six,

samples of that elusive potion of God and joy,

something filling for that quicksand in the pit

of my stomach that never knows enough.

 

But somewhere between scratching crusted burnt rice off

the bottom of the saucepan, and wiping down child

burning up with a fever in her bones,

I find Someone

at a half past six

handing out now, dented and dinged up,

handing now out as grace,

that it's all grace, this too,

and I'm not sure if I buy it.

 

But when I lay out my palm,

lay it right flat out, the palm, me, the will,

to take, give thanks, eat even this,

in the dented moment that presses into my open hand

I feel the pulse of God.

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::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 2012-03-01 [del.icio.us]

Christian convert receives 3 year prison sentence

"Masoud Delijani was arrested by plain clothes intelligence officers on March 17, 2011, together with his wife and nine other Christian converts when they had gathered in a house church for a service." Pray with us for this family?
Pinterest and Copyright: What I'm Doing

@Blogging with Amy... a very helpful post if you are on pinterest!
Limbless Evangelist Nick Vujicic Honeymoons With New Wife in Hawaii, Christian News

... just -- amazing, inspiring grace!

How to Make Your March Amazing

March, it could come in like a romping lamb and we could go to the woods and take winter for it's last turn.

One last spin on ice,  one final round up the trail.

"Isn't it beautiful?" The Farmer calls over his shoulder, calls back to me.

His little lamb skips beside him, trying to keep up. "Honk! Honk!" His happiness rings through the woods and I laugh.

There are skates to pull on and laces to tighten and pucks to fly and last of winter to catch. Geese could be flying soon?

I grin over at the Farmer.

"Help me around, Mama?" She reaches for my hand, we twirl around and glade and glide. The earth's spinning round and everything'll melt. There's a crow calling somewhere in the east.

Around the river inlet we circle on skates, like Joshuas encircling —  waiting for winter's walls to come crashing down.

It could be this in the middle of winter giving way to spring and the resurrection of everything.

It could be this in the middle of Lent:  March — the month to march around walls in our lives and pray for God to bring down everything that keeps us from Him.   

March — a 31 day march around the Jericho that's keeping You from Jesus.

31 days to march around that one fear. March around that one worry. March around that one temptation. I know what my Jericho is. I name it. I will go home and I will write it down.

Write it in a prayer journal. Circle everyday of March on the calendar, make a prayer circle around each day and march around that Jericho, head bowed. Pray around it again and again — sliver blades cutting a circle, encircling all that is with His will, presence,  grace.

Everything cold and hard, it could give away.

The wobbly little skater, she turns a curve and leans. This could be my Lent.

I had reached out and touched the wood of Christ's cross last night when we had lit the Lenten candle. I had knelt down to light the flame.

I had knelt before that wood bent into a circle.

Christ carries a cross, circles my sins, and He brings down all the walls.

I don't want anything to wall me out of His love. 

She and I circle the pond again.

Crack every hard wall in me, God. 

My March will be this encircling march around that one thing keeping me from You. 

The boys throw wet, melting snow into the thawed edge of the river, everything beginning to break open, away…

They look so alive, laughing.

"Can we go stand by the fire?" Shalom looks up at me, her cheeks right red.

And around the fire, there's all this heat.

And around the sun, there's all this warmth lighting straight across the ice.

And when I turn, she's up in a tree.

This March spinning in —

and her up there looking over walls about to come down.

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Make March Amazing? March to Joy? Take the March Joy Dare?

Print March's Joy Dare … Share the Dare! {Want to know more about the Joy Dare? Head happily over here!}

 

  And speaking of marching?

Three times.

Three times Zondervan pitched to get a Jesus-book about giving all glory and praise and thanks to Him — onto the shelves of Target stores.

Three times we prayed for the Jesus-message of Real Joy to be found in aisles just down from the socks and shampoo — where the everyday person might find it — find Him!

Three times Target said it didn't matter how a message was moving — they just weren't giving very much of their limited bookspace to God-books.

But we just kept marching this prayer around Target and asking God to make a way? 

And the fourth time? God brought down the walls! And I'm told this that the Jesus-message of Joy in Him is now sitting on the shelves of  Target …  Only God.

Will you join me in praying for the people who may find it — that they'll find Him.

As a Canuck up here in the north, I'm not going to see first-hand the miracle God has wrought all for His glory alone. But if you're in a Target store, might you look up the nest-girl on the shelf, thank Him for getting a Jesus-exalting book out into the everyday places?

And if you know someone who might be encouraged by a dare to live fully? Picking up a copy at Target lets Target know that it's good and beautiful and hope-filled to have more Jesus-books on its shelves!

Happy March! And keep happily marching!

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!}

The Secret to Fasting in a Lent that is Failing

Dust cloth in hand, that is what I'm thinking Lent's all about.

Don't I desperately want to be changed when Easter morning dawns?

For something different to have dawned in me.

I wash things down.

I mean, it's easier to blithely dust, spring clean, do some happy spring decorating than to think about Lent. I get that. I'd like that.

But it's not what I want. I want to have grown into someone else by Easter morning. I set the Easter Tree back into place.

I can see it on the ends of the Easter Tree branches, remnants of buds on the tips of the dogwood branches. That is the point: "to grow up in every way into him who is the head." Growth. How often is there change without growing pains?

Maybe that is what the gnawing struggle of a Lent fast is all about — the growing pains of grace.

A week of Lent and that's what I've got — how weak I am.

All week, struggling with the fast.

Stacking a few plates too loudly last night, snapping some frail heart bones with this tongue of mine, tongue tail of my heart. A messy discussion that was toned too angsty.

A word spoken too fast, harsh, and that look in the eyes of a teenager.

A door slammed hard and my heart the hard thing.

Raising your own flesh and blood can be this exercise in seeing how dirty your flesh is and how dire you need the blood of Christ. All my love can amount to so little.

Leaning over the stove, wiping it down, seeing all my own burned-into me grime, I lament in the midst of Lent.

"Oh…deliver … me…" I choke it out, "…from this body of death."

I have no idea — does a contrite heart express the essence of Lent?

There are those words read last night after we lit  the Lenten candle:

"Self-denial means knowing only Christ and no longer onself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us.

Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to him."  ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to him.

For all my failing and flailing to give up anything to become more, there is this:

The realest fast is to hold fast to Christ.

Isn't that the motivation every fast needs –the possibility of holding fast to Christ?

Fasting, it is that: abstaining from anything that hinders adoration of Christ.

I could do that, make that the definition of my Lent and fast: Letting go of more of the world, to lay more hold of God.

That would redefine me.

Isn't that it?  

"Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the Invisible.

Fasting the other — with which we cast away the visible….

Prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development."

~Andrew Murray 

Something always comes to fill the empty places. I need empty places so He can fill me.

Is my fast failing because I am focusing on what is empty — instead of Who is filling.

I turn to wipe sticky peanut butter off the fridge, and I could write it right there on the fridge, turn this Lent slant: The best Lenten fast finds way to hold fast to Christ. 

Focus on Him. Hold fast to Him.

Wiping away fridge prints, it all reads clean:

Fasting is really about communion – and you have to broken of something to be made whole in Him.  

There are still the floors to wash.

The bookshelves in the study to dust.

I rinse out my cloth.

And all the water running, it runs straight clean.

 

 

"But you,

when you fast…

~ Matt. 6:17

Related: What a Real Lent Really Means {And a Free Devotional to Download & How to Make an Easter Tree}

Small Devotional book found here

Free Devotional to Download here 

 

Google Friends Connect: An important note:

Tomorrow, March 1, Google Friend connect will no longer be compatible with this blog.

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Thank you for grace. It's a crazy joy to walk with you with Him, inviting more to head with us towards Home. 

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Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart. To read the entire series of spiritual practices

This week, and the next, as we walk with Him towards Easter, might we consider: The Practice of Fasting. We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….

Today, if you'd like to share with community The Practice of Fasting … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

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!}

A Man, A Dog & How to Form Up a Life

She watched him from the side of the road, there at the woods, watched as he called to his dog.

How the snow was deep, how the ditch was deep.

How the dog dug.

She watched how the Farmer came.

Waded down by the fenceline, snow up to the waist, bent and filled his arms with his dog.

That is how he did it, how he formed his life into something hallowed. He bowed his head, bent his knees, gathered the needs into him, arms stretched open and towards the sky, and he knew the moments they were that, all this fresh grace.

He knew that it wasn't just this once bending that would shape him.

He knew that it is only what is done consistently that forms us at all.

The bulk of the beast filled his arms and it was all the loyal years that bound the man, that loosed the dog, and she didn't think he felt any weight at all.

Sometimes love is that, all the weightlessness that fills our arms and shapes us cross-bent.

After he hauled his dog out of the deeps, the Farmer knelt down and into that canine of his.

Laid his head on the dog's, laid down beside him, laughed and rolled and pulled him close and all this joy, all their ties, it filled the woods and the sky, and she could feel it, the kind of daily ways that formed a man like this.

She almost turned, could hardly bear to watch a love like this.

Wild and cruciformed like God's.

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::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 2012-02-27 [del.icio.us]

The Story of Two Houses and a New TV

@ Mom on a Mission... It was the photo of the girl holding up a sign, waiting for funds for her house to be rebuilt that absolutely got me. And this mom on a mission? She gets it -- gets Him.
brushes with the holy

@Jeanne Damoff: "How is it my heart ever grows cold toward Him? I eat and drink, and in my sated state I go on my way, the noise of life ringing in my ears, drowning higher, holy sounds." Beautiful, stirring post.
Live Stream with Eugene Peterson

@ Q Ideas... my friend, Gabe Lyons, is dialoguing with Eugene Peterson Tuesday and Wednesday mornings this week, about practicing Sabbath and living immersed in Scripture. First come, first serve basis.
The Reunion

@Sheila Seiler Lagrand... "We've come to visit his mother at the nursing home. He hasn't seen her for five years, because it's hard to make plans when you live on the streets." A poignant, powerful story of an addict visiting his elderly mother for the first time in years... ah, to love well.

When You Want to Turn Your Life Around

It's after I cut the squash right open.

The two halves split and quartered there on the cutting board.

After the paint brushes are washed out, after the pawns of chess game are all returned to their squares, after the potatoes are baked and served, the dinner plates are pushed back empty.

He splits the Word right open then and that's when I'm cut to the quick.

"First, I thank my God…" That's what it reads, right there in Romans 1. The Farmer reads it slow — what should always come in the beginning.

And Paul, he writes more, peels back the hot holiness of God. I hold it there in my hands.

These are the holy words that hollow me out.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men….

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened…

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity… For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions…

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind – to do what ought not to be done.

The light fills the cups on the table.

I can feel it's warmth on the nape of my neck. Spring coming. The  hot heat of it melting everything cold.

One of the best writers I've read and a kind friend, Pastor and fellow Canadian, Mark Buchanan, he'd asked the most critical questions of them all:

"What initially sparks God's anger?

What is the root sin, the molten core of wickedness and godlessness — that convinces God to turn us over?"

~Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild

Isn't that what we have to figure out?

It's right there in Romans 1.

It's not the sinfulness that you'd think:

It's the thanklessness — that we do.

It's thank-lessness that first stirs the full wrath of God.

The beginning of Genesis and Romans 1 pivot on the same point: Eve's thanklessness for all God does give and her resentfulness of the one fruit He doesn't give, this is the catalyst of the fall. Which Romans 1 confirms: "For although they knew God —they did not… give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

Our fall is always first a failure to give thanks.

The pride of thanklessness always comes before the fall. God's makes Himself plain and there's no excuse – but they did not give Him thanks.

I have done this and just this morning, there spooning potatoes. The house upended with ridiculously messy and wondrous living. Paint smeared on a shirt, across a table. The chess loser in loud tears.The stringy inners of squash all over the counter. Instead of falling on my knees in thanks? I fall into sin and anger.

G.K. Chesterton had offered: 'Thanks is the highest form of thought'… And Romans 1 concurs and expresses how non-thanks is the lowest form of thought — of life: "When we don't give Him all thanks, all our thinking become futile."

Thanks is the highest form of thought — precisely because it rightly orders everything: Us laid low. Before God on High. But refuse to give God thanks? God lets our very lives become refuse. Our thinking becomes futile and God on High lets us live low.

It would make a strange but right cross-stitch and I'd do well to stitch it into the fabric of me: A lack of doxology leads to depravity.

If Christ is the cornerstone of true doctrine, then doesn't true thankfulness have to be the cornerstone of our days?

That is what Buchanan discovers in Scripture, right there in Romans: "The heart of wickedness and godlessness is that: a refusal to glorify God. It's the refusal to thank Him."

It's brings me up short, there in the noon light. Scripture doesn't say wickedness is rooted where I think it is: wickedness isn't rooted primarily in some ghetto, on some shady backstreet. I could drive a sign in here:

The root of godlessness is thanklessness.

Wickedness springs up in me — when I am thankless.  

There is Buchanan's startling realization: "All the wickedness in the world begins with act of forgetting."

I nod slow. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom — and the forgetting of the Lord is the beginning of all sin.

Forget to give thanks — and Who you forget is God.

In a thousand, infinite ways God turns His glory round for us to see, but we can shrug; we can turn a blind eye. And so He lets it come, what we want — and everything, us, it all goes black.

There is light at the table, these open pages filling with it.

Isn't that what Paul is saying: When, in light of everything, we don't turn to God in thanks — God gives in to what we want — and turns us over to the dark…

Don't bother to acknowledge God with thanks — and God no longer bothers you with Himself?

I don't know. I don't know.  Or maybe I do. Yes, cut to the quick.

Hope, she looks up from me from across the table, from across the sunlight.

"I printed out 21. Twenty-one of those "7 Gifts Good & Perfect" sheets? And if I did my math right?" She grins and glances over at her dad.

The Farmer winks.

"Seven a day for 21 weeks — and that's more than a thousand thanks for a thousand gifts."

Hope looks down at Romans 1 open before her.

"I'm turning my life around." Turn in thanks and everything turns — and God doesn't turn away.

And there is this: If all the dismembering wickedness in the world begins with an act of forgetting — then the act of literally counting blessings, literally re-members to God. This is the making whole.

Hope's hair's radiant in the sun.

Her smile, this shining.

After lunch, I clean off the counter, gather up the squash inners, and Hope, she's turned in the light, turned in thanks.

All these halves finding their wholes.

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Related:

The Science behind Why Giving Thanks Turns Everything Around

How to be Great Thinker

An offering of thanks… the stress becoming this song… #3196 – #3178 of One Thousand Gifts

#3196… raspberry cupcakes on Sunday afternoon

#3197… the eaves all dripping in late February

#3198… a friend who shares notes on Francis Chan's talk @ the Justice Conference & I lay awake into the night

#3199… a sister who brings me one of her almond flour chocolate cookies to try out after Sunday services

#3200… the surprise of this in People Magazine? The startling ways of God… turning us all around to give thank to Him 

#3201… making kale chips

#3202… her wrinkling her freckled nose and wiggling that one front tooth of hers

#3203… friends that hold me accountable to begin hard things

#3204… the Farmer making the bed, pulling up the white quilt, before he leaves for the barn

#3205… #6 on the NYTimes — God working a His own turning, this revolution towards Him

#3206… Hope writing out her one thousand gifts — beginning her Ten Thousand Reasons to Bless the Lord



{Consider pausing music by clicking the slider directly under the header? If reading in a reader or via email, click here to view video? }

Unspeakable, unending thanks be to God…

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Take The JOY DARE for February– and Count 1000 Gifts in 2012 (maybe winning the NikonD90 camera would be a gift too?)

Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!

Share the joy? {March Joy Dare Coming!}

{Download to print here}

{P.S.: Some were wondering where/how to chronicle their #1000gifts in 2012? Any way that works best for you:

in a private journal, with the free app, on your blog and join us in linking up here on the blog every Monday, on the free Year of Graces calendar, or on facebook or twitter (#1000gifts). I'll be sharing thanks to God each day, Lord willing, on my personal facebook page and on the One Thousand Gifts facebook page — the community there is profoundly encouraging. You are more than welcome to join us! And yes, we will post a new Joy Dare Calendar here on the blog, the first of every month, Lord willing — you can use the Joy Dare Calendar for each month — or not at all.

The point is? Just count any 3 gifts a day — to count 1000 gifts in a year. That's all. Any way that works for you! Just count your blessings!

And yes — we'll be updating the blog with more information about the draw for the Nikond90 camera for those who complete the dare and count 1000 gifts in 2012! Open our eyes, Lord, Open our eyes! The Whole Earth is fully of Your Glory! }

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Free Printables : 3 Ways to Find Joy this week

1. A Year of Graces {A Free 12 Month Gratitude Calendar} Click to print here

 

2. Count all His Gifts Wherever You Are: {One Thousand Gifts Free App}:

Click here for the free #1000gifts app : The gift of joy for a friend? Print this card about the free app for a friend

3. 1 Paper = 1 Week of Joy

Tuck 1 sheet of paper in a pocket & jot down 7 gifts for 7 days:

(perfect booklet to cultivate the habit of the joy hunt for kids)

(folding instructions for booklet here)

 

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!}

Links for 2012-02-24 [del.icio.us]

Why Would We Observe Lent?

@ Desiring God ... "But we mustn't avoid preparation for Easter... we'll be wise and obedient if we start by preparing our own hearts and lives. Lent offers us seven weeks for this purpose."