One thousand gifts - ann voskamp

Pg 21 "He's watching that see of green rolling in winds. Then it comes slow, in a low, quite voice that I have to strain to hear. "Just that maybe...maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds." The words I choked out that dying, ending day, echo. Pierce. There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't"

 

Pg 27 It’s the in between that drives us mad. It’s the life in between, the days of walking lifeless, the years calloused and simply going through the hollow motions, the self-protecting by self-distracting, the body never waking, that’s lost all capacity to fully feel – this is the life in between that makes us the wild walking dead.

 

Pg 31 Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our ever day here. Who as the time or eyes to notice?

 

Pg 32 I thumb, run my finger across the pages of the heavy and thick books bound. I read it slowly. In the original language, “he gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo.” I underline it on the page. Can it lay a sure foundation under a life? Offer the fullest life? The root word of eucharisteo. Is charis, meaning “grace,” Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks. but there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning “joy”. Joy. Ahhh…..yes. I might be needing me some of that. That might be what the quest for more is all about – that which Augustine claimed, “without exception…all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is joy.”

 

Pg 33 so then as long as thanks is possible…I think this through. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible. Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning—now; wherever, meaning – here. The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional peak experience. The joy wonder could be here! Here, in the messy, piercing, ache of now, joy might be – unbelievably- possible! The only palace we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now. I whisper it out loud, let the tongue feel those sounds, the ear hear their truth. Chairs. Grace. Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving. Chara. Joy. A triplet of stars, a constellation in the black. A threefold cord that might hold life? offer a way up into the fullest life? Grace, Thanksgiving, joy. Eucharisteo. A Greek word…that might make the meaning of everything?

 

 

Pg 35 Eucharisteo – thanksgiving- always precedes the miracle. The bread rises. And I stand in the kitchen stirring a kettle of lunch’s lentil soup, the one that calls for the salsa and the carrots and the hungry children, and I read while stirring and I have to sit down to let the words find their places: “ The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharustic world. That was the fall! Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude, was the fall- humanity’s discontent with all that God freely gives. That is what has scraped me raw: ungratefulness.

 

Pg 42 “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter that everyday epiphanies, those transcend moments of the aw that change forever how we experience life and the world.” Sarah ban breathnach

 

Pg 57 Happy in all these little things that God gives. Ridiculously happy over slips of cheese. That I am, and it’s wild, and oh, I am the one who laughs. Me! Changed! Surprised by joy! Joy is the realist reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gits and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: Joy.

 

Pg 61 Eucharisteo takes us into His love. I am struck and I long to chime: Daniel is only a man of prayer because he is a man of thanks, and the only way to be a woman of prayer is to be a woman of thanks. And not sporadic, general thanks, but three times a day eucharisteo.

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Philippians 4:8

 

Phil 4:1-8

 

Τὸ λοιπόν, ἀδελφοί, ὅσα ἐστιν ἀληθῆ, ὅσα σεμνά, ὅσα δίκαια, ὅσα ἁγνά, ὅσα προσφιλῆ, ὅσα εὔφημα, εἴ τις ἀρετὴ καὶ εἴ τις ἔπαινος, ταῦτα λογίζεσθε·

 

 

Phil 4:7-8

καὶ ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὑπερέχουσα πάντα νοῦν φρουρήσει τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν καὶ τὰ νοήματα ὑμῶν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

 

 

 

20 something

 

What does this invoke?

A permanency? What’s unarguable?

 

 

What is true? That we are here, we are living.

What is honorable? {we are having a hard time to define this}

What is right/righteous/Just?  {what character traits is God developing in us}

Because God is good those situations are just because God is in us. That is why we can give thanks to God because of those situations…not because things are easy.

 

What are intangible but just?

David. When he could finally take the throne.

 

What does it mean to have a right heart? Loving, accepting, forgiving, grace,

What is not having a right heart? Judgmental, hypocritical.

 

What is pure? What is holy?

Purity is not merely a sexual choice, it is anything that would define your body. Anything that will bring any kind of soiling or the casting down of your spirit.

 

A level of innocence…purity from drugs, Purity of thought (sexuality, self-loathing, hate and anger.) When we knock who we are, who we abuse who we are we are telling God you screwed up and I need insert (whatever) because you screwed up. When we have thoughts of contempt jealous

 

Be determined to set your heart to purity.

 

What things are lovely? What is pleasing in every respect?

Food, candy, smells, friendly, coffee, friends

 

What kind of things do you think you would feel friendly towards? Ufc? Journaling? Reading? Being outside when it’s cool. College football. Painting. Movies Music tattoos.

 

What are things of good report? Babies born.

Intangible things that are of good report? Humility, salvation, love

What is excellent? Obedience, modesty, relational breakthrough. Winning a metal in the Olympics. Brian regan.

Matt 5:20

righteousness - the state of being in a proper relationship with God (strongs concordance def greek).

Proper... what is proper? befitting, good, just...

just.... blameless, conscientious

trying to define what it's not?

antonym of  proper is inappropriate... this would be self righteousness. what would that look like?

Jeremiah 9:24


 the ways in which the sermon has been in interpreted. Uncompromising demand.  Matt 5:48

what do you think of when it comes to righteousness? Is the confusion of righteousness is because of doctrine? 

moral development

Matt 5:23

the responsibility is ours. This is what is commanded of you and go and do whats right.
Modern day gifts to God.
...time, prayer, worship, prayer, fasting.

relating 23,22,21,20 ...> because one of the ways you do that is that if you know someone who has an issue do these things before worship, or charity work..it does God no good if you carry on in a way that is offensive to others.

apologize for you behavior  and then come to God.