A couple of weeks ago, I was gifted with the new-release book "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.
I am already on my second reading.
After reading it the first time, I treated myself to the digital ebook, so my hardcover can sit on my nightstand, and I can still have the book on my digital reader when I'm on the road.
It is that good. Ann is a grace girl. Ann's writing is more akin to poetry, heavy with metaphor, brimming with emotion. No light reading here, her premise is a challenging one...."All's Grace". Everything. Everything is a gift, even the heartbreaking events in life. A few snippets, or, as I call them, "underlined bits" :
"...life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change."
"Life is not an emergency. Life is brief and it is fleeting but it is not an emergency. Emergencies are sudden, unexpected events - but is anything under the sun unexpected to God? Stay calm. Enter the moment. Give thanks."
I find myself nodding in agreement. Life is not an emergency. But it can feel urgent. Then, I read this:
"Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow. In Christ, urgent means slow. In Christ, the most urgent necessitates a slow and steady reverence."
"Life at its fullest is this sensitive, detonating sphere, and it can be carried only in the hands of the unhurried and reverential."
Beautiful book, beautiful cover, beautifully written by a beautiful woman. This book is one of the very few keepers - one which I know I'll dip into over and over again for decades to come. I vacillate between feeling such gratitude to the woman who gave me the book, and gratitude to the woman who wrote the book.
Read "One Thousand Gifts". Then, start your own list of "one thousand gifts", as I did over a year ago. (The seed of the book I hold in my hand this evening actually began as a blog entry on Ann's blog, "A Holy Experience". I took up her challenge to chronicle one thousand gifts long before her book was published a couple of months ago.)
3 comments:
I too am on my second time through. Did you know that she is doing interviews over at incourage ?
Started working on my list of 1000 things last fall. She has taught me to look at life with different eyes.
Enjoy!
No I didn't know that! I'll google incourage and see if I can figure it out. Wouldn't this book be a great one for an all-girls book club?
:::sigh::: Sometimes, there are just 'no words', y'know? And yet, Ann V. seems to find them... GREAT idea to get the digital book... will investigate for my 'Nook'. :o)))
Abiding Love...me across the mtns
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