One Thousand Gifts and a Lifestyle of Gratitude

Today's hurried lifestyle is filled with deadlines, to do lists, and goals, all pushing us faster and farther than ever before. We need reminders to slow down. Some of us, more than others.

We need to slow down, look around, and be grateful for the little gifts God leaves scattered along our way. Smell the rain. See leaves falling from the trees. Hear geese flying overhead. Taste the goodness of a homemade meal. Feel the warmth of a roaring fire.

But it's not just about slowing down, and it's not only about being grateful. It's even more about being intentional.

It's about praying for, seeking out, and anticipating divine, God-given opportunities—those opportunities to share the love of Jesus. It's about sharing my story all wrapped up in His, and His story embracing mine. 

It's About...

• smiling at the checkout girl and leaving her with an encouraging word about God's goodness.
• helping the elderly lady at the library get to her car in the rain and reminding her of God's love.
• meeting the mailman at the box with a note of gratitude and an invitation to church.

I love Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts because it helps me get there!

“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

The book, One Thousand Gifts, was such a blessing to me! A disclaimer though, I read the Kindle version as I often do. You need to get the hardcover! Get the One Thousand Gifts hardcover book. ​

Why do I want you to invest in the hardcover?

1. This book is so beautifully illustrated! 
2. IT'S ON SALE!

​The photographs in the book are way beyond gorgeous (the Kindle version does not do it justice), and Voskamp's writing style is uniquely her own, poetic and lyrical.

The book begins with the theme of suffering, sorrow and disappointment, and how these things drive gratitude away from our hearts. One Thousand Gifts is a picturesque accounting of how Voskamp first saw her own need for gratitude. The suffering, sorrow and disappointment that made up her life at that time had also planted seeds of ingratitude. She was looking for a way to trade a lifestyle of ingratitude for a lifestyle of gratitude. She learns to make that exchange not only in spite of her hardships, but even through them. And there is the key, to be grateful THROUGH the hardships. If we can do that, we can cultivate a lifestyle of gratitude.

One Thousand Gifts Proposes a Lifestyle of Gratitude

So how does Voskamp cultivate this lifestyle of gratitude? She does it in a very tangible way by setting out to number all the things she has to be grateful for. She begins this journey by challenging herself to write down one thousand gifts of God’s grace. ONE THOUSAND GIFTS OF GOD'S GRACE! Wow! Can I name 100? Can I even name 10? I know there are a thousand, the question is, can I see them? Do I recognize them? Have I allowed myself to experience them? Or, am I just too hurried?

"What are these one thousand gifts?" you ask. They are the ordinary, everyday things we so often overlook and take for granted.

• The way the morning sun moves across the kitchen floor.
• The sound of a blue jay outside the bedroom window.
• The smell of fresh cut grass.
• The beauty of a corn field.

As she begins to list these gifts of God's grace she finds that she also begins to speak the language of gratitude. Voskamp discovers how to be grateful not just in spite of life’s hardships, but how to be grateful through them. Her life is transformed! I believe when we also make this discovery in our own lives, we too will begin to live transformed lives.

As Voskamp learns to live a lifestyle of gratitude, she also calls on us to do the same. She wants us to experience this lifestyle, and to begin our own journey of listing One Thousand Gifts. ​

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Researchers Said of Those Who Keep a Gratitude Journal:

"Participants who'd kept a gratitude journal felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future... they were a full 25 percent happier than the other participants.

​They sleep 1/2 hour more per evening, and exercise 33 percent more each week and felt more joyful, enthusiastic, interested, attentive, energetic, excited, determined, and strong."

If you are convinced already that a more grateful lifestyle is what you've been craving. If you're ready to live intentionally. To pray for, seek out and anticipate the divine opportunities. To share your story allowing gratitude to take a seat in your heart where ingratitude once lived, let me introduce you to the Pretty Simple Books Gratitude Journal. I have gifted this to several friends and the response has always been positive.

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Today, let's begin to cultivate a more grateful lifestyle. Let's live intentionally, pray for, seek out and anticipate divine opportunities. Let's share our stories. Let's let gratitude take a seat in our hearts where ingratitude once lived. 

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"Just like you, Ann Voskamp hungers to live her one life well. Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. How, Ann wondered, do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long and sometimes even dark? How is God even here? 

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God's gifts. It's only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted, a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved by God.

Let Ann's beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come live the best dare of all!" --goodreads

It's only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have that
we discover the lifestyle we've always wanted---a lifestyle of gratitude.

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Another beautiful, thought-provoking quote from the book speaks of letting go—letting go and letting God! ​It's something I have a difficult time doing. I go to Him in prayer with a problem, or even more frequently with a whole, long list of problems. Instead of leaving them there with Him I take them back. Sound familiar? 

“Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.” ―Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Letting go and letting God is part of cultivating a lifestyle of gratitude. Yet, so often ingratitude seems to be woven into the very fabric of our lives. In this quote from Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts ​she writes of ingratitude being at the very heart of humanity’s fall into sin. In the garden of Eden humanity became discontent with all that God freely gives and with all His graces towards us. ​

"From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Satan, he wanted more. More power, more glory. Ultimately, in his essence, Satan is an ingrate. And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden. Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn’t that the catalyst of all my sins?

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other. Standing before that tree, laden with fruit withheld, we listen to Evil’s murmur, “In the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened...” [Genesis 3: 5].

But in the beginning, our eyes were already open. Our sight was perfect. Our vision let us see a world spilling with goodness. Our eyes fell on nothing but the glory of God. We saw God as He truly is: good.

But we were lured by the deception that there was more to a full life, there was more to see. And, true, there was more to see: the ugliness we hadn’t beheld, the sinfulness we hadn’t witnessed, the loss we hadn’t known.

​We eat. And, in an instant, we are blind. No longer do we see God as one we can trust. No longer do we perceive Him as wholly good. No longer do we observe all of the remaining paradise. We eat. And, in an instant, we see. Everywhere we look, we see a world of lack, a universe of loss, a cosmos of scarcity and injustice. We are hungry. We eat. We are filled... and emptied." ―Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

I hope you'll take the opportunity to foster a lifestyle of gratitude as Ann encourages us to. Consider the Gratitude Journal from Pretty Simple Books. 

You can read about another one of Voskamp's books that we love here The Broken Way and The Abundant Life.

If you've been blessed by either of these books, please leave a comment and let us know.