Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
69 quotes
"The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us..."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this- all His love."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"I hunger for filling in a world that is starved."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"But, someone, please give me—who is born again but still so much in need of being born anew—give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing towards self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out. Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The joy of small that makes life large."
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy. (Page 57)"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3). Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it.... I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. (page 70)"
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are