Tag: Ann Voskamp

Migrating gazelles

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Ann Voskamp had a recurring nightmare: She’d been diagnosed with cancer, but no one cared. 

Ann’s little sister had died when Ann was only four, and the tragedy had defined her family’s life. Her mother was in and out of psychiatric wards. Ann battled anxiety, and an inner voice told her she was a failure. 

But one day she got a card from her father-in-law who really had lost his wife of 50 years…to cancer.

Ann’s nightmare.

He wrote, “Thinking on the beginning of this year, who does God call to come home?  Is it me, Lord? May I be ready.”

So, Ann wanted to know, how I do I live in this life so I’m ready for the next?

How does one fully live this life?

In a beauty parlor one day she saw a woman reading a book, 1000 Places to See Before You Die. She wondered, if I die of cancer, I’ll never get to see gazelles migrating in the Serengeti. I’ll never get to climb Machu Pichu, or whatever. 

I’m just a homeschooling mother of six, washing towels, cleaning toilets.

She asked, “Are there places that must be known, accomplishments that must be had, before one is really ready?”

“Are there physical places that simply must be seen before I stop breathing within time, before I inhale eternity?”

“Why? To say that I’ve had reason to bow low? To say that I’ve seen beauty? To say that I’ve been arrested by wonder?”

“Isn’t the wonder here?

And she remembered that 12 hours before he was crucified, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and broke it.

In meditating on the Greek word “gave thanks,” eucharesteo, she realized that the root word charis meant “grace,” and a derivative of charis was cara, which means “joy.”

What she needed wasn’t more sights to dazzle the eye, it was more holy joy. 

She began to realize that the depths of joy depended on the depths of her thanks.

The way to prepare for the next life is to be grateful in this one.

Ann Voskamp is the author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Thanksgiving precedes the miracle

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Two years I ago I did a sermon series on the book 1000 Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, by Ann Voskamp. It was her story of going from a life of self-doubt to finding joy in all things.

Ann’s earliest memory was from age four, when her baby sister died in an accident in front of their farmhouse. The tragedy defined her family’s life.  

Many years later, someone suggested that she make a list of 1000 things she was thankful for:

Consider the blessings in your life.

Write them down.

Give thanks for them.

She did, and inventorying her blessings became a habit. She began to see the blessing in the simplest, everyday things.

Ann Voskamp came to understand that “Thanksgiving precedes the miracle.”

Jesus gave thanks, and a few loaves and fish were enough to feed 5000.

Jesus gave thanks, and Lazarus came out of the tomb.

And on the night of his betrayal, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and shared it with the disciples, and that preceded the greatest miracle of all, the cross and the empty tomb.

Giving thanks is not a way of conjuring up a miracle, of course.

Giving thanks is a practice of the heart that makes God’s blessings real to us.

This Sunday after worship, our church family is going to do an exercise called Asset Mapping to help us discover some of the gifts with which God has blessed us.

We just might discover gifts we’ve overlooked in ourselves and each other. We just might discover ways to honor God by putting those gifts to use in ways we never imagined.

This is also the week set aside for giving thanks for our gifts, so let’s be sure to do that.

Thanksgiving, after all, precedes the miracle.

Thanks-living

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Years ago, the story goes, an admiral was speaking to a Navy Officer’s Wives Club. Before he began, he asked the wives to line up in order of rank. They dutifully complied without a word being said. He then lectured them that they didn’t have rank, their spouses did.

The wives smiled politely, but they knew better.

When we enter into a new situation, we instinctively size up where we fit in. Yet when Jesus left heaven to enter into his creation, he always took the bottom position. And at his last meal before his betrayal, he knelt to wash his disciples’ feet.

And he told us to do the same.

We’ve been studying Ann Voskamp’s book, 1000 Gifts, about her personal journey from anxiety to joy. Her journey meant practicing giving thanks in all situations, even when it was hard.

The practice transformed her. It didn’t change her situation; it changed her.

And the transformation was ongoing. There was always another, deeper layer to a life of thanksgiving.

Naming blessings, and giving thanks for them, led her to live the blessings.

Voskamp says, “At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life…every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.”

It’s not just the Navy. Every day, someone or something reminds us where we stand in some pecking order.

But when we get down on our knees to serve Christ by serving others, when we empty ourselves of us, that’s when Christ fills us with Him.

And with Him comes joy.

Bridges

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Pittsburgh is the City of Bridges. You can’t go anywhere in Pittsburgh without crossing them. Unlike that other famous city of bridges, Venice, which is crisscrossed with canals, Pittsburgh is crisscrossed with rivers and hills, and bridges are needed to cross between the hills, and over the streams that run down from them. 

When you cross a bridge, you trust that the bridge will hold. Countless times every day, that trust is affirmed.

Ann Voskamp, in her book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson in saying, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

When some great challenge looms up ahead, and we’re consumed with fear and anxiety, Voskamp suggests that we say a prayer of thanks.

Thank the Bridgebuilder every time you cross a bridge to remind you of the countless times His bridges have held.

Spitting Seeds

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One of my wife’s favorite memories is of the evening she spent eating watermelon and spitting seeds off our front porch with our two boys. That was 28 years ago, when the boys were 7 and 9.

Our lives in the Air Force were nomadic, moving to the next assignment every couple years as I moved up the career ladder. When you move that often, you’re always in a hurry. You only have so much time to make your mark before you move again. We did our best to “make the most” of each new assignment and turned each move into a travel adventure.

So why would eating watermelon make the list of life memories?

Because every now and then you slow down long enough to take in the miracles in a moment.

There are the miracles of things like light and air and gravity. There’s the way the light reflects off things and enters the eye, which signals the brain, which makes sense of it all. The miracle of taste.

Seed spitting presupposes photosynthesis, the miracle of botanical growth, to say nothing of the miracles of farming, food distribution, and supermarkets.

And who can fathom the miracle of a mother’s love, and two rambunctious boys who began as tiny eggs in their mother’s womb?

And how is it they love each other?

Why does something so “simple” give so much joy?

What, after all, is more miraculous than these things that we call “ordinary?” OK, some things may be more spectacular—a lightning strike, a mountain vista—but more miraculous?

When asked by Moses to state his name for the record, God answered, “I am.” Not, “I will be.”

“I am.”

God is in every moment.

Ann Voskamp, in her book 1000 Gifts, asks, “In Christ, don’t we have everlasting existence?” 

Shouldn’t we live like we actually believe it?

If we’re immortal, and we are, what are we rushing for? 

Giving thanks

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Twenty years ago, I realized it was about time that I quit making excuses for not being involved in church. I told myself that if anyone asked me to volunteer, I would say “yes.” (Notice that I didn’t start out by actually volunteering for anything.) I told our family we were going to give thanks at every meal, and we would no longer skip church.

Not exactly a great commitment.

But then one thing led to another. I said “yes” to teaching adult bible study; “yes” to being a deacon; and “yes” to being a guest preacher. Then Jana became a certified Christian Educator. Both our sons became serious about their faith; today one is a minister and the other is in seminary. I’ve been a minister now for over ten years.

Giving thanks was life changing.

Most of us had parents who taught us to say, “thank you” when someone did something nice for us. But the Christian faith teaches us to give thanks in all things.

Jesus gave thanks at his Last Supper, knowing he was about to be betrayed. But was only through Jesus’ betrayal and death that the world received the ultimate blessing of resurrection life.

Most polite people know to give thanks after some blessing comes into their life.

But for a follower of Jesus Christ, giving thanks precedes the blessing.

Giving thanks gives us an awareness of the blessings all around us. This Sunday, I’m starting a sermon series on gratitude inspired by Ann Voskamp’s powerful little book, One Thousand Gifts. Starting on September 8th, I’ll be doing a five-week study of the book during the Sunday school hour. Voskamp, a farmer’s wife in Canada, worked through personal tragedies to be able to see God’s blessings in all parts of life. I invite you to join me.