Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 52
January 1, 2022
Only the Good Stuff: MultivitaMins For Your Weekend [1.1.22]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Photos by Reed Geiger on UnsplashLooking down the river of the New Year. What does God have in store for you? He is so trustworthy
in a brief look at 2021–the word of the year is grace — always free gift
Monarch Population Soars 4900 percent since last year…beauty
.. .Christianity Today’s Top Testimonies of 2021. God has been so good..
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Daily Good News! (@delightfulnews)
…grace and beauty are sown so deep in our soul
Beauty of God’s creation – glory soak
….please enjoy these ducks changing their minds
Our most viewed post of 2021 – How to Meet God at Your Lowest Point
View this post on InstagramA post shared by @___philomela___
13 Stories that made us happy in 2021 – from Christianity Today
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Animals (@babyanmlpics)
…we are always longing for Home…where we belong
He has performed an act of kindness every day since the start of the pandemic. #bethegift
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Donna Pisani (@donnapisani)
from Austin Farwell “God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by 𝙽𝚈𝙲 𝚆𝙾𝚆 𝙼𝙴𝙳𝙸𝙰 ® (@nycwow)
Walking in a winter wonderland…NYC
We sing to the God who always makes a way..
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT. Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender invitation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
Enjoy free tools and printables by visiting here
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 26, 2021
If Your Holidays Have Been Hard, This Changes Everything
If your holidays have been hard, or it’s been a hard year— take a deep breath, wrap your hands around a cup of something warm, and exhale and heal right here:
You can play it below or by clicking this link.
*****
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT. Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
December 19, 2021
Light the Candles. Advent Readings. Fourth Sunday: LOVE. [VIDEO experience]
Join us on the farm with lighting the candles for the Fourth Sunday of Advent? Reading via email? Just click on the video below or right here
Disclaimer: This ain’t all together or professional slick or anything… Just a simple, homemade video, taped by our Hope-girl, because God pressed it hard on our hearts to make a space for folks who may not have a community to celebrate the wonder and beauty of Advent? If you’re looking for an updated, fresh story, professional version, it’s our humble joy to serve you here
*****
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now.
Come let Jesus touch our broken relationships & heal us & reconcile us with His PEACE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him — Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!December 18, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: MultivitaMins For Your Weekend [12.18.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
These photos are from www.thewishbooks.net, a NYT Bestselling book series @_thewishbooks For more beautiful photography see Per Breiehagen’s IG page
These photos are from www.thewishbooks.net, a NYT Bestselling book series @_thewishbooks For more beautiful photography see Per Breiehagen’s IG page
These photos are from www.thewishbooks.net, a NYT Bestselling book series @_thewishbooks For more beautiful photography see Per Breiehagen’s IG page
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Animals (@babyanmlpics)
View this post on Instagram<A post shared by Ben Irwin (@benirwingr)
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Marcie Alvis-Walker (@blackcoffeewithwhitefriends)
…the Christmas Pageant we all want to see..
Bolivian Church Helps Father of 7 Get Back on the Road
Want An Anxiety-Free, PeaceFul Christmas? I Always Start Here
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space, for worry.”
…gifts from a customer inspire a delightful song of thanksgiving
….the gift of taking care of your neighbor #bethegift
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Маргарита Герман (@margaret__german)
God’s good green earth & creatures…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Some Good News (@somegoodnews)
…kindness from the smallest ones…
The Light Gift – a precious Christmas book to share
This and so much more at The Keeping Company to move us to keep company with Jesus
Another beautiful pic by Pre Breiehagen & at his IG page Pre BreiehagenO! Night Divine
How to Have the Greatest Christmas…
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family this Christmas
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, 2014, Christian Retailing 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019,
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 16, 2021
Want An Anxiety-Free, PeaceFul Christmas? I Always Start Here
S
ure, you can go straight ahead & light the the Advent candles, the Hope, Joy, Peace candles, but it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’ve wrecked good and holy things, crushed your precious people with expectations, been a hypocrite in more than a thousand wincing ways.
Ask me how I know.
It’d be kinda pious, if that was all humbly self-deprecating — instead of devastatingly honest.
“The pieces of us that we try to keep hidden and buried — is what keeps burying our peace.”
I don’t know who left out this devotional titled, “Still Point” but it beckons to me during Advent, just after lighting the Peace candle
I just happen to open it to this unexpected excerpt from the Scarlet Letter, with the shame-ridden Reverend Dimmesdale stumbling through the night streets to climb the town’s public scaffold — the Puritans’ own rendition of Calvary. The tortured, self-loathing pastor’s desperate to somehow publicly pay his pound of flesh for all that relentlessly haunts.
He’s wild for his own scarlet letter — and yet can’t bear the shame.
I close the book, lay it on the bedroom windowsill.
Who isn’t haunted by all kinds of inner thoughts — that you don’t want anyone to know? Who isn’t undone by all kinds of failures — that you’d never want on display?
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
The snow soundlessly falls outside the window, burying the fields, all the woods, in white.
“When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.”Hiding anything is an illusion — b ecause can anything hide from God?
And maybe that’s the moment I start to dig out, start to find myself:
The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.
When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.
Gusts of December cold air leak in around the edges of the window. I wonder if: What drives some of our anxiousness — is anxiousness to not be found out for all of who we are. Maybe if we were really known — we don’t know if anyone would really love us?
Maybe: There are things in our minds and hearts that we never want fully found out — because we’re terrified we’d find out that no one fully loves us.
Maybe: Our ache to be taken and accepted as we are — is what drives us to take and hide parts of ourselves we believe are unacceptable.
A blast of wind blows a skiff of snow off the back step.
Maybe the secret to peace — is to have no secrets.
I press my forehead against the clear glass. And maybe — there is actually no question at all:
“Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space, for worry.”
God fully knows what you never want anyone to know — and He needs you to know, even now, that you are His Beloved.
What had my brother-in-law messaged last week?
“Hey — just following up on our conversation at church….” We’d all lingered long afterward the last prayer, kinda oblivious to the cold, standing there talking about how we are all called to carry each other’s brokenness — but we can’t do that if we’re all wearing masks of fake holiness.
“What if we really knew: There is nothing that has been said, done, or thought is so big that it requires it be paid for twice….He paid for it all….all the known and not known.”
That’s when his words started to swim a bit in a brimming grace. Yes:
If Christ didn’t pay for all the unspeakable things, the shameful things, the things only He knows — then our salvation isn’t the real thing.
If Christ doesn’t take all of us, in all of our judgement — then our salvation would actually be fraudulent.
What if — the judgement, the abandonment, the rejection you are anxious about in ways you try to ignore — doesn’t even exist?
What if — the peace you long for is yours right now because no matter what happens, ever — you always, miraculously, get to belong?
What if there is no maybe about it, ever:
“Therefore is now no condemnation… “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you…” Romans 8 MSG.
“There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.”A gust blows snow off the edge of the eave, like burdens can lift.
As I turn from the window, I just happen to glance down at my wrist — and it jolts me.
There it is.
I’m wearing my own scarlet letter.
Right there, a small cross, marked on my wrist.
Inked on my wrist forever one late summer afternoon Israel, not far from the actual Calvary, on a hushed back street of Jerusalem itself.
Permanently inked on my wrist by a man who introduced himself as Wassim Razzouk, whose family has been serving Christian pilgrims since the 1300s — more than 26 generations — inking proof for pilgrims of their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Their pilgrimage to the Cross.
I’d sat in front of Wassim in that stillness of a stone-walled Jerusalem shop and traced how small I wanted that cross, that one symbol, right there on my wrist, and he’d drawn it slow and I’d nodded.
That.
And there it is, etched right into me, my own Scarlet Letter, unashamedly right there under my fingertips, what pays the price for everything — and gives the greatest gift of peace through everything. That one Scarlet Letter?
That one Scarlet Letter Cross is
my penance,
my providence,
my path,
my protection,
my purpose,
my passion,
my peace —
my person.
That Scarlet Letter Cross — is my alpha and omega, my beginning and my end, my everything. Like learning that one letter by heart could transform my heart, I find myself tracing and retracing that Cross countless times a day, right there like peace speaking under fingertips.
Whatever love, provision, hope, acceptance, grace, restoration you need — will not run out — because Your God will never run out on you.
Whatever you fear, doesn’t actually exist — because your God exists.
Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.
There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
When I light the Peace Candle of the Advent wreath — I can read it there in the middle of our little Advent Wreath — etched in the side of the manger, the only gift we need: Emmanuel.
God with us.
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
The Peace candle burns with a red hot love that brands even us as His — and all that doesn’t matter burns away.
* * * * * *
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole FamilyThe Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016 The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age) Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 12, 2021
Light the Advent Candles. Light them, light them.
Trim the wicks, watch the reflections, sit in the dark and wait.
Today, the third Sunday of Advent — when we light the Joy candle.
So we wait. We wait through the long, black night. Wait through the black that gets in your marrow.
Wait through the dying, the cries you can’t hear, the lurching gasp of the last death heaves.
Sit through the night and the losses that scrape the sides of a soul, the burning tears that run, run through this night even now.
A light that the people in the dark couldn’t ignite, couldn’t inflame, and couldn’t fabricate—but could only find.
Taste their saltiness and the darkness that seeps in cold at the corners and stains a thousand souls all alone.
Wait in the cosmic dark, inhale the black of an endless universe, stare into it and feel the darkness get darker
“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,” wrote the American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan.
That loneliness can envelope you in a loud room full of voices, when you stand at the window and watch the dusk thicken, when you turn out the last light.
To cross even the vast blackness of the Milky Way alone would take one hundred thousand years, traveling at the blurring speed of light.
Right now you are under a roof, in a country, on a continent, near an ocean, on a planet—a pinpoint of a planet, a spinning orb waiting in the dark, waiting in the ache of Advent.
You, this speck on a speck, floating in a ray of light, on a pale blue dot suspended in the lonely blackness of space.
our favorite family heirloom
You can sit in the dark and feel the reverberating echo of Carl Sagan’s words through our impossible emptiness, like a blaring headline for the world: “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
That is what one of our wise men decreed to us who are living, walking, dying in the darkness—that there’s “no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
No hint of help. No rumor of relief. No sign of saving. For us waiting through the night, waiting through the dark.
The message of Christmas is that this world’s a mess and we can never save ourselves from ourselves and we need a Messiah.
And then . . . there it comes to the waiting, to the leaning, to the cold—a dawn! Light! Light!
Not mere candles wavering in the face of the black but a dawn—a dawn to crack back the black, to pry up the dark with bright shards, to peel it back and flood the cold room with light.
A light from beyond, erupting, heaving the black right back. A fire that the people walking in darkness did not set—but that they saw.
A light that the people in the dark couldn’t ignite, couldn’t inflame, and couldn’t fabricate—but could only find.
Christmas can only be found.
Christmas cannot be bought. Christmas cannot be created. Christmas cannot be made by hand, lit up, set out, dreamed up. Christmas can only be found.
In the crèche. In the cradling trough. In the mire and in the stench and in the unexpected—and only in the dawning of Christ.
True, Mr. Sagan, there is no “hint” that help will come from somewhere else to save us. There is a dawn in the dark, there is the JOY of unstoppable light, there is God-glory blazing.
Our God who breathes stars in the dark—He breathes Bethlehem’s Star, then takes on lungs and breathes in stable air. We are saved from hopelessness, because God came with infant fists and opened wide His hand to take the iron-sharp edge of our sins.
Our God who forms and delivers the black of the heavens—He waits patient like an embryo in a womb and delivers Himself to free you. We are saved from forever pain, because God pierced the dark and came to the pinpoint of us in the universe and took the nails.
Our God who cradles whole inking galaxies in the palm of His hand, whom highest heavens cannot contain—He folds Himself into our skin, and He uncurls His newborn fingers in the cradle of a barn feeding trough . . . and we are saved from ourselves.
We are saved from our loneliness, because God is love and He can’t stand to leave us by ourselves, to ourselves.
That is the message of Christmas. The message of Christmas is not that we can make peace. Or that we can make hope, or make joy, or make love, or make light, or make gifts, or make this world save itself.
The message of Christmas is that this world’s a mess and we can never save ourselves from ourselves and we need a Messiah.
For unto us a Child is born.
The Light never comes how you expect it. It comes as the unlikely and unexpected—straight into Bethlehem unlikely and the feed trough hopeless, and Christmas whispers there is always hope.
It doesn’t matter how dark the dark is; a light can still dawn. It doesn’t matter if the world whispers, “There’s not a hint that help will come from elsewhere,” telling us that nothing will ever improve, get better, change.
God favors the darkest places so you can see His light the brightest.
So there can always, even now, be joy.
And once the light of Christ shatters your dark, shadows forever flee your shadowlands. There’s no going back and living in the dark; you live in the impenetrable, safe Light of light, and Christmas never ends for you.
A Christian never stops living Christmas. True, you cannot light Christmas—because it’s Christmas that lights you.
It’s Christmas that dawns on you, and you only really believe in Christmas when you really live it.
When you light a dark world and the unexpected places with a brave flame of JOY; when you warm the cold, hopeless places with the daring JOY that God is with us, God is for us, God is in us; when you are a wick to light joy-filled hope in the dark—then you believe in Christmas.
So light the Advent candles. Light them, light them.
And you can see it, with every lit candle, sparks of the dawning.
Joy, Joy, JOY catching on everything.
(excerpted from The Greatest Gift)
*****
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now.
Come let Jesus touch our broken relationships & heal us & reconcile us with His PEACE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him — Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!December 11, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: MultivitaMins For Your Weekend [12.11.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Hallstat, Austria Photo by Sebastian Pichler
Seydisfjordu, Iceland Photo by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson
Interlaken, Switzerland Photo by Bao Menglong … just take a long, lingering moment — and let the blanketing white of His amazing grace still your soul to know that He is God so all will be well
…everyone needs an encourager like this!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by I Can’t Even (@icanteven)
How to Make Real Peace with the Way Things Are
Peace isn’t matter of circumstances — it is a matter of focus. Singleminded centering on Christ gives a singular peace
This baby in a cup of hot cocoa is keeping things sweet on Christmas
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Some Good News (@somegoodnews)
connecting with family is so precious…surprises are extra sweet
View this post on InstagramA post shared by OUR PLANET DAILY (@ourplanetdaily)
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Fria, Eira, Saga & Loke 🇸🇪 (@unrulywoolies)
Worth watching again. I’m not choked up, you are!
She’s 100, and celebrated her birthday with her two older sisters. Key to a long life? ‘Keep going’!
Post of the week from These Parts: How to End All Christmas Anxiety: Start Here…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Travel and World‘s Beauties (@justourplanet_)
All God’s creatures…all *walks* of life!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by N O N A J O N E S (@nonanotnora)
The Church doesn’t have an address because the Church is alive!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Amaury Guichon (@amauryguichon)
Oh! The craftsmanship and the delicious, chocolatey artistry!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by 🔥ਰਾਜੂ ਬੋਹਰਾ😎 (@bohra_1259)
Our favorite advent family heirloom
This and so much more at The Keeping Company to move us to keep company with Jesus
Photo by Brigitte TohmSit down with a cup of something warm and remember…He is coming and He is already here.
Light of the world
Crown in a manger
Born for the cross
To suffer, to save
How to Have the Greatest Christmas…
Advent starts in 3-2-1 — this weekend!
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family this Christmas
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, 2014, Christian Retailing 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019,
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 10, 2021
How You Can have a Little Charlie Brown Christmas (About Fears & Heartbreak at Christmas)
There’s a bunch of kids here, sloshy with hot-chocolate, who just keep playing a Charlie Brown Christmas.
And yeah, I’m not ashamed — so what if it took me a few takes? Because when I finally saw it, I was entirely taken:
Only when Linus retells the Christmas story and repeats what the angel announces, “Fear not!” — does Linus drop his blanket for the first time.
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
And I choke it back and swig down more of my frothy, chocolatey mug.
The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.’
“The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.'”The birth of Jesus — banishes our fears.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is about letting go of our security blankets.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of masquerading perfection — to be secure in a perfect Messiah who saves us from our mess.
Because the Spirit of Christmas releases us from the fear of scarcity — and gives us the security of abundance.
Moves us from the fear of not enough grace, not enough means, not enough us —- to the security of more than enough to give — because we’ve been given Him.
“We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But . . . [the Christmas Spirit] ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of Him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas,” writes the fine man of the Old Book, J.I. Packer.
“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians… go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit…
For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor––spending and being spent––to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends —– in whatever way there seems need.” J.I. Packer
“The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.”The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.
‘For God so loved the world — He gave.’ Love lives given.
The Christmas Spirit isn’t about getting gifts — as much getting to be the Gift.
Be the Gift of grace, of peace, of hope, of reconciliation.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of being right, the security of being distant, the security of holding certain people at arm’s length.
Once, on a Christmas evening, under this comforting blanket of stars poking through the dark, I threw open the door of our beat-up Ford and I took that first step toward a door that had been long shut, and it felt terrifying and terribly freeing, and maybe we only win our battles when we lose our need to be right.
I hadn’t been there in years. I have no idea how long it had been since her and I had talked with any kind of warmth.
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ. Love lives given.
Every slow step toward her door, the snow crunched, like bitterly cold things that have long stung, could be crushed, giving way to amazing grace.
I’m telling you —
Sometimes you want to turn your back when a relationship gets hard — but you want to face freedom more.
“The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.”Sometimes you want to continue your cold war — but you want to be part of peace on earth and in your heart more.
Sometimes every step toward peace with someone — is a journey of a million heartaches within you.
But if He can take a journey of a million light years to meet us in the stench of our manger mires — to make peace with us —-we can take one step after another and make peace across the aisle, the street, the table.
The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.
I knocked kinda feeble on her door, willing the other hand holding a gift for her not to stiffen so tense, and she opened that door and sometimes when we break into a smile, some of the pain breaks, and we breathe.
Angels still speak — and to us:
Do not fear — even here.
You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.
“You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.”I reached out my arms — and she reached out hers.
And it can happen: That Big Dipper tips over all of us and pours out the Christmas Spirit, and our spirits can come home for Christmas.
She handed me a plate of her pecan pie and we talked by the tree and it wasn’t Hallmark perfect but it was perfectly honest and imperfectly real and all tasted like a slice of heaven to me and I could feel it:
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go — to let the Spirit move.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit — is about letting the Spirit heal you.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit —- means: Reconcile for Christmas.
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
I exhaled when I wrote it on a piece of paper here, taped it up over the little Christmas tree right there at the sink, and it felt like a kind of healing:
“Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.'”Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.’
Fear not! Even now, it’s okay to let go of the security blankets — and go with “Plan Be.”
Plan Be — lets this Christmas just be about being, and it lets other people just be.
When you let other people just be — and don’t try change even one of their heart beats — you become a safe place for your people. The Spirit of Christmas is about letting His Spirit do the changing — in all the people and us.
Simply asking how someone’s heart really is — is the gift every heart really wants most.
Plan Be this Christmas — chooses to simply Be Present.
Be present to the moment as it is, to people as they are, to God with us now, Emmanuel.
“ Plan Be this Christmas — chooses to simply Be Present .”Be present — and fear not. This is the gift you can have any moment.
Be present to broken hearts — because this is how you give your heart to Jesus.
The kids and I wrap up presents for those who live across fences, across aisles, across the world. The Christmas spirit only asks you to Be Present. Give yourself the gift of God.
Steam rises from hot chocolate mugs before the fire.
Live Plan Be: Be Present — Be the Gift.
We could all come home to each other for Christmas in all kinds of creative ways.
Heard the weather forecast this morning say they’re calling for a white Christmas.
Let it be, let it be, let it be.
What more could any of us want than a little Charlie Brown Christmas of letting go?
To let God come.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
December 9, 2021
How to End all Christmas Anxiety: Start Here
The calendar’s just over 2 weeks before Christmas, and I’m standing at the kitchen table, giving my baby girl her daily beta blocker meds to slow down the racing pace of her broken heart.
We do this every single morning, afternoon and evening, her and I, three times a day of her heart-slowing meds.
“God takes broken hearts —- and gives us His.”But this morning — I kinda wonder, in the final holiday crush of things, if there’s anything to slow down my own heart pounding with all the holiday things that need to still happen, that still need to get done.
The light catches on the Advent candle and something catches in me:
The things you can bake, make, or fake for Christmas — can’t fix the things that aren’t things.
The things that you can buy and wrap for under the tree can’t wrap your life up with a neat bow.
There are relationships that are still cracked and bruised. There is still brokenness and dysfunction in places you hoped had healed. There are still failures and loss that are tender to the touch, and there are hearts that are racing with overwhelm … and breaking achingly slow.
Our favorite family heirloom
And there is snow melting slowly out in the orchard… and a story I once heard seeps into the edges of my heart-racing thoughts, a story of a girl named Taylor Storch who had headed with her family to Colorado for a little skiing.
Thirteen year old Taylor had laughed loud as she skiied down the mountain before she had fallen — crashed — down a straight rocky slant of the earth. By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home, and her parents, Tara and Todd, were signing papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.
They ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman in Arizona whose heart was failing so weary that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore — a woman named Patricia Winters.
Taylor’s mama had only one request. Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear Taylor’s heart beating inside of Patricia Winter’s chest.
“When God leans in close to all our hurting places here, what He actually hears — is the still-beating heart of His own Son.”Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’ door, and Patricia Winters opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in. And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.
And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.
Thrum. Thrum.
Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears….
Like a thunder vibrating right through her —
Her daughter’s still-beating heart.
What Taylor’s Mama
really hearing — was the heart of her girl in a different body.
And I pick up my own little girl’s daily heart medicine.
And I stop, my own heart slowing, profoundly moved.
The turkey won’t make the holidays, and the lack of cookies won’t break them, and what you didn’t get done or made or bought or cleaned can’t wreck the holidays. You don’t need the perfect gift, the perfect table, the perfect traditions, the perfect capture with the perfect filter for the instagram — to make all the broken things perfect.
“When you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened, when it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.”All the hurting places this holiday that I am trying to fix with all the things, with gifts and baking and decking and making — all the things I desperately wish I could fix in a heart beat?
God comes to change in a heart beat.
I can hear my own heart:
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
My own heart’s racing, aching, and failing to make the perfect holiday …
But that’s the point in the middle of the holidays:
Your heart can’t make all the broken things right with all the right gifts, your heart can’t fix all the things by making all the Christmas fixings, your heart can’t forgive all people that get under your skin.
Your heart can’t do it all. That’s why He gave you His.
When God leans in close to all our hurting places here, what He actually hears — is the still-beating heart of His own Son.
You don’t need any thing to make a holiday.
Things don’t make a holiday — only a heart can.
“These days are holidays not because of all we’ve bought and done but because we’ve been bought with His Love and He’s finished it all.”Only the set-apart holiness of a heart can make holy-days.
Only a heart that is holy enough to make holy-days.
Things don’t make the holidays — only His holy heart can make these days holy-days.
When you don’t think you can forgive what’s happened, w hen it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.
For unto us a son is given — so we are forgiven and we can forgive.
These days are holidays not because of all we’ve bought and done but because we’ve been bought with His Love and He’s finished it all.
These days are holidays because these are days set apart to simply see the grace that is present in all of our days, to see the blessings we already have, the great grace gifts He’s already bestowed.
These days are holidays because these are the days we slow down and see what we too often miss: When we count all the ways He loves us — we realize we have all the grace we need for the holidays right here.
You don’t need all the things for the holidays, you simply need one thing — a heart willing to see it: There is still love and grace beating at the heart of the universe.
After I put away her heart meds, I turn there in the kitchen and see the Christmas tree is right here by the fireplace — and it’s right there, what we all need most at Christmas:
The Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants: God takes broken hearts —- and gives us His.
Every Christmas Tree testifies to the hope of heart transplants: Christ goes to Calvary’s Tree to give us His own heart.
“Every Christmas Tree testifies to the hope of heart transplants: Christ goes to Calvary’s Tree to give us His own heart.”Jesus minus all the things from the holidays — equals the perfect holidays.
You don’t need all the things, all the list of to-buy things, to-bake things, to-make things — because you’ve been given the heart of Christ and that is what you need more than anything, because it changes everything.
His heart is at the heart of what makes the perfect holy-days.
And two weeks before Christmas, I breathe calm. If we’ve been given Christ’s heart, is there anything else we need? (Romans 8:32) All the overwhelm I feel — is overwhelming gratefulness. That’s all I need: a heart full of thankfulness. Thankfulness unwraps joyfulness here.
Thankfulness makes what’s little into love, what’s hard into holy, what’s now into the present.
And I scoop up our baby girl, both of our hearts slowed and steadied and sure, and we pause to gaze, not at the things under the tree… but to wonder simply at the grace of the lit Tree and hearts can burn within us.
It’s true, even now: Miracles can happen in a heart beat.
*****
What’s at the heart of Christmas — are not things — but the heart of ChristAnd from our family here on the farm to yours, wherever you are, can we slip these two free gifts under your door with all our love?
Gift Tags For Intentional Act of Givenness
for treats to give out down your street, gift-blitzing your whole community!
(The Voskamps are headed right now into our own little country town with these tags and bags full of treats to surprisingly GIFT-BLITZ all the people in the stores and streets: Love came down — and you are seen and loved! #BeTheGift! #LiveCruciform #TheBrokenWay)
Print out this free printable card, write your own letter to the recipient, a Celebration of Words of Affirmation, tuck in an envelope with the accompanying tag (with a little gift card, if you’d like) — and let them know you cherish them as The Most Amazing Gift. (Or print out enough copies of the card for several people to give one recipient a stack of several cards and GIFT-BLITZ them with love!)
The most priceless gifts — don’t have to cost anything.
The most meaningful things to give — aren’t things — but love given from your heart.
Love came down and gave you His heart — so go and freely share His love everywhere. It’s all that we all need. Minus all the distracting things — and just let His heart of love & grace be everything.
*****
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here. With every step, we are walking into our forever now.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His HOPE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him — Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!December 7, 2021
How to Make Real Peace With How Things Are
I think of that later, how his hands look like they are worn with peace, the way he’s won a good life by forging peace no matter the heat of things.
His hand had reached for mine in the woods.
When the world grows warring loud, a walk in the woods calls the weary away.
Maybe all we all want for Christmas is some heart-lifting peace.
“Anxiety is a function of divided attention. When we divide our attention, we make ourselves anxious. Our lives fall to pieces when we give anxiety the power to shatter our peace.”Snow falls like manna through cedars. The woods looks like Narnia and yes, it’s winter, but not always winter only: Christmas is coming. The second week of Advent settles in. The Peace candle’s been lit.
Because, yeah, sure, peace on earth can be sung on the street corners right now, but most of us would be mighty happy with even a blink or two of peace just on the internet?
Or maybe just some peace in the kitchen with those well-meaning human beings who are actually tied and knotted forever to us by blood lines or covenant promises but are kinda struggling to navigate their way through a tilted and spinning world without side-swiping an innocent bystander or two.
Holidays can feel more like warring days.
They say that: Peace is trusting that God won’t let things fall to pieces. The opposite of peacefulness is anxiousness. And the word in Greek for anxiety is merimna —- which means pieces.
Anxiety is a function of divided attention. When we divide our attention, we make ourselves anxious.
Our lives fall to pieces when we give anxiety the power to shatter our peace.
Inner peacefulness requires single-mindedness.
Centre on Christ.
Peace isn’t matter of circumstances — it is a matter of focus. Singleminded centering on Christ gives a singular peace.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
When we make space in the PACE of things — we find PEACE. They say that.
Make SPACE in your Pace to find PEACE.
I say that to myself, again and again, crunching through the hushed snow.
They say that too: The way to weather life every day is to get out into the weather every day. A half hour walk in nature can change the nature of all the other hours. Apparently doctors and the Healer Himself prescribe creation to recreate broken places.
We walk in the woods for hours. We’re a broken, limping people, and there is light in the trees.
“Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place you escape to out of your every day life, but a Person you walk with every day.”Peace can be a startlingly ugly thing.
Peace is biting your tongue hard, because when you have to choose between winning and being kind, you choose kind. Because kind is always winning.
Peace is made when you give people a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind.
We are all the walking blind if we live an eye for an eye. These could be the holidays that are holy days because we do it a different way.
Peacemaking is about making yourself into a screen door whenever someone difficult walks through your door — so no harmful words can slam into your heart, but everything hurtful sails right on through.
Keeping the peace means you keep good boundaries.
And keeping the peace doesn’t mean repressing your needs but pressing into the need to be like Him.
This flips the entire peace paradigm and process:
Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place you escape to out of your every day life, but a Person you walk with every day.
And that person is Christ and the Christ-life always looks cruciform.
The Peace Makers are always the ones who make their lives look cruciform — cross-shaped.
Peace Makers know it: The only way to reach the life you want, you have to keep reaching out. That the answer to a whole host of problems in us, is to keep reaching out.
The cruciform life is as profound as living a life that’s about keep reaching out.
The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
Peace only happens where we wage peace: love bomb when it’s least expected, shock and awe with amazing grace, intentionally strategize with acts of kindness. The world changes when we aren’t just peace keepers but peace makers.
“Finding some peace is about living a life you don’t need to run from, but living a life you want to run into.”Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone — means you can’t do it all but you can do all that you can do.
Finding some peace is more than closing the bathroom door and drawing a bubble bath or jetting off to some beachside resort for a week of sun therapy. Finding some peace is about living a life you don’t need to run from, but living a life you want to run into.
If you find yourself having to regularly run away from your life to get some peace — it’s because you are disconnected from the actual Person of Peace who meets our embattled places with peace, and shows us the way to embody peace in all of our battles.
Finding some peace means you stop being the victim in your life and let the hard and holy ways of Christ give you victory over the hard things in your own life.
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
(VIDEO ABOVE ^ by Levi Voskamp, filmed during our walk in the woods: do nothing at all for a few sceonds but watch & let Peace really meet you & make it well with your soul)
Peace means making a life that doesn’t look good on Instagram but looks good before God. Real peace is about giving up a life that merely looks good — for a life that actually is good.
You win real peace when give up winning every battle — so you win the war that matters.
Peace often means —
“Peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.”There is no peace unless you give up pieces of yourself to gain more of the life you really want. Exhale and let go.
Peace happens when everything & everyone who seems against you — brings out the best in you.
Brings out Christ in you, because He is the best in you, and He transforms you cruciform and Love lives given.
Peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.
Every step through the snow, I think of those ten steps toward the shalom life:
Label less, Love more
Pace less, Pray more
Worry less, Worship more
Consume less, Create more
Complain less, Care more
Grip less, Give more
Snap less, Smile more
Harp less, Hear more
Rebuff less, Reach more
Fear never, Forward always.
Every step forward through the woods, all this stays close and we stay close to the water, to the stream’s moving waters, making a way through the snow. The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
It’s strange how that is: Everyone wants world peace, but who does what’s needed for peace in their own world? Under their own roof? In their own heart?
Exhale. Reach out.
The snow falls soundlessly in the woods like it’s falling on listening ears.
All through the woods, snow falls like it’s making a new world, and peace like a river makes the only way for the soul that is well with the soul.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
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