Thursday, January 30, 2014

all is grace

It’s just about February and I’m pretty sure I still keep writing 2013 on everything. Can I still give January and the New Year some credit? January has been crazy for me, but it's given me the much needed opportunity to think a lot. I didn’t specifically have any New Year’s resolutions but while home to Michigan at the beginning of the month, Dani and I made a deal to read a book per month this year… look at us two getting crazy. Haha. But seriously, it was a pact I was more than willing and even needing to make considering I hadn’t actually finished an entire book in who knows how long. It was starting to bother me.

Our first pick: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. This book is literally changing me—and changing my view of everything, because everything, all is grace.

Ann’s book is the inspiration behind my most recent living room Pinterest project, a very visible reminder for me and all those who come in and out of my house to fully live by always thanking God so that we may be able to see grace in all and experience joy that can only come through knowing Jesus:



Charis. Grace.
Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving.
Chara. Joy.


Grace, thanksgiving, joy. Eucharisteo.

“He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God” (Psalm 50:23 NIV).

Our salvation and joy comes through thanking Jesus for what he has done on the cross. I’m not going to get into a ton of detail here but I will leave you with some of Dani’s and my favorite portions of One Thousand Gifts. Just read the book… or start making a list of 1,000 things, even the simple little things, that you are thankful for.


"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."

"How Jesus took the bread and gave thanks… and then the miracle of Jesus enduring the cross for the joy set before him. How Jesus stood outside Lazarus’s tomb, the tears streaming down his face, and He looked up and prayed, 'Father, I thank you that you have heard me...' (John 11:41 NIV). And then the miracle of a dead man rising! Thanksgiving raises the dead. The empty, stiff cadaver surging, the veins full of blood, the alveoli of the lungs filling with oxygen, the coronary arteries full of the whoosh of thrumming life."

"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don’t numb themselves to really living."

"Every step I take forward in my life is a loss of something in my life and I live in the waiting: How and of what will I be emptied today?"

"It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace."

"I keep on counting blessings to keep on remembering to keep on walking out into the unknown."

"Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies… waters that have no life."

"Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain… again, ,again, again"




“O my soul, thou art capable of enjoying God, woe to thee if thou art contented with anything less than God.” --Francis de Sales


--Megan