A Grace-filled Life

There are times when you come across someone so beautiful, with such a beautiful gift to share that you stand in awe of them. You stand in awe of their ideas and all that they have to share. Ann was that person for me. From the first words that I read, like candy in my mouth. I was hooked, like drugs that rocked my world and opened me up to greater things.

Now let me be clear. No I am not on drugs or anything of the sort. I am just trying to describe to what Ann's books and her words have done to my life and my heart. They have gotten me excited and made me think. They inspired me to really look at my life and look at what I was thankful for. Ann has such a beautiful way of pointing us to the amazingness of God with words that literally drip off the page. She excites me with her ideas and there is part of me that never wants the book to end. She truly, truly has a gift from the Lord and something that she handles with grace.

Ann, Thank you so much for sharing snapshots of your life, moments of honey filled grace, that flow out of your busy life. 1000 gifts that you found in your daily life. Simple things. Thank you for inspiring me to share and start my own list of 1000 gifts. For encouraging me to take in the beauty around me. The light rays of light and hope that the Lord gives us through out our day. The small glimpses that God gives us into the sweet parts of life in the midst of busyness and hurt. Today, I am so thankful for you, friend. For your words and for how you truly shine the light of Christ in everything that you do. The verse of page 65 of your masterpiece made me stop and sit.

"We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing." (Psalm 39:6)

You said yourself that waste makes haste. We need not hurry through life. But instead slow down, drink in the moments of grace, of thanks and give thanks in the little things. We need to slow down and stop and reflect on all that the Lord has done for us. Our busyness can wait. It is in the times of quiet and reflection that we stop and realize the blessings that the Lord has given to us. The times that we are most thankful for grace-filled moments when we can stop and see grace in action. Hurry can wait. Everything can wait. What is important is that we rest in our father that we rest in his love and his peace. In him, worry and fear melt away like rain. In him, we are safe, secure and protected. We are thankful for a father that cared enough for us to have his one and only son, beaten and hung on a tree for my messy life. But not just for my life. but for your life too. He died for every. single. person. on. the. earth. He was not too busy for us. Jesus took time. He drank in those moments of grace and he took time to be intentional with everyone that he met. He gave his body and his life so that we could experience life and life with the father; a life of beautiful, honey filled grace. A life bursting with grace and thanks.

“Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.” 
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.” 
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are