Three

It's a daily thing. This thing we call life.

It involves choices.  Some hard, some easy, some neither here nor there, some with barely a pause to acknowledge there was a choice to be made....

This week I've been reading "One Thousand Gifts: A dare to live fully right where you are" by Ann VosKamp...again.  I'm reading with purpose this time.  I'm reading with highlighter in hand this time. 

This wasn't a book that I purchased for myself.  It was given to me.  A gift from a dear friend.  A friend that knows me.  The real me.  A friend that knows me enough to put a mirror up in front of my face and say "LOOK...what do you see?"   She's the kind of friend that pauses you in the middle of a rant and says, "Ok, so what does God want you to learn from it?"  This is a friend that sharpens and challenges my faith.

This gift my dear friend.  A purchase prompted by the Spirit.  A God wink.

I missed it the first time.  Oh I was thankful for the gift.  I read it and truly enjoyed it.  But I never fully acknowledge the gift in it's entirety.  For what this gift could mean.  For the gift God intended it to be for my relationship with Him.  As a lens to see what it could be like for me.

For me...

To live FULLY in this life that is mine. 

To live vertically and not horizontally. 

To see His goodness in and His fingerprints on my life. 

To live with purpose.  Not my purpose, not the world's purpose, but HIS purpose.  Even if no one else could see it or would even acknowledge it if they did.

To have a spirit of thankfulness. A JOY-filled spirit. As Ann says, "...a lifestyle of thanksgiving."

"Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life."

"He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God"  Psalms 50:23

To see the beauty of the life God has granted right HERE. 

Ann expresses it this way..."Isn't is 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 every day here.  Who has time or eyes to notice? All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me."

What's the best way to get this "lifestyle of thanksgiving"?  Like anything else you just start.  Just make a conscious choice to see the good things.  God promises that they will be there.

If you count three things each day that you are thankful for, three gifts in the everyday by then end of the year you will have counted over 1000 gifts.

And so it began.  Three daily gifts for each day of August.  First three things white, then three things eaten, and so on...

Here's the beauty of it all....there are SO many each day!! 

They were always there.  I just needed to change lenses...