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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ann Voskamp
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June 17 - June 20, 2020
His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.
This eucharisteo is no game of Pollyanna but the hard edge of blade.
In Mary’s humility—her willingness to die to her expectations and plans—God exalts her. In her submissiveness to His will, He fills her emptiness with fullness of Himself.
Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies … waters that have no life.
He wraps a towel around his waist and kneels low to take the feet of His forsakers gently in hand and wash away the grime between their toes. This is the full-bodied eucharisteo, the eucharisteo that touches body and soul: hands and knees and feet awash in grace.
gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.
But when Christ is at the center, when dishes, laundry, work, is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains.
That is what makes us content—the contented, deep joy is always in the touching of Christ—in whatever skin He comes to us in.
It’s the astonishing truth that while I serve Christ, it is He who serves me. Jesus Christ still lives with a towel around His waist, bent in service to His people … in service to me, as I serve, that I need never serve in my own strength.
It’s the fundamental, lavish, radical nature of the upside-down economy of God. Empty to fill.
It is by the very function of our being, not our doing, that we are the beloved of God. And so we become the love of God, blessing those He loves.
“The way through the pain is to reach out to others in theirs.”
“I slept and dreamt life was joy, I awoke and saw life was service, I acted and, behold, service was joy.”
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. C. S. Lewis
Love is the face at the center of our universe. A sacred Smile; Holiness ready to die for intimacy.
“I have loved you,” says the LORD (Malachi 1:2 NIV), “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3 NIV). In a thousand ways He woos. In a thousand ways I fall in love. Isn’t falling in love always the fullest life?
I can’t simply ignore His serenade because I’m unsure, uncomfortable, uninterested, thinking I’ve claimed Christ as my Savior already anyways. God is relationship and He woos us to relationship and there is nothing with God if there is no relationship.
This is what His love means. I want it: union. This is the one gift He longs for in return for His unending gifts, and this even I could give Him, and anywhere.
What that first and catastrophic sin of ingratitude ruptured, what that one bite of the forbidden fruit stole from those fully alive—union—can be repaired by exact inverse of the Garden: lifestyle gratitude and a willingness to eat of the bread He gives in this moment.
Every breath’s a battle between grudgery and gratitude and we must keep thanks on the lips so we can sip from the holy grail of joy.
