in all things...

You mutter it when a man flings his arm to stop the smashing of closing door to your face, while passing him in a crowded rush. "Thanks," you say. But in all things?

Do we give thanks, do we feel thanks, do we know thanks?

I'm reading and losing my breath over Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. My soul is filling with the truth of an overabundance of gifts I've never recognized, let alone shown my recognition to God. And joy is given from Him when we recognize those gifts and hug Him in our hearts for them. so many. so very many.

Prone to see the loss instead of the gain, prone to weep over the past, for the past instead of jump for joy over today, for today, that's what I am.

I'm not trying to be a spiritual cheerleader, waving Pollyanna pom poms in your face, because I wrestle myself. I wonder, is it ignorant to focus on grace? Is it unintelligent to delight in the "little things," in chocolate smudged on a little boy's grinning face, or in the dance of a candle's flame, or in the pink vine weeds out back? Aren't we supposed to focus on higher things?

But what higher things? What is higher than His gifts? "For God so loved the world that He gave..." Jesus. Our very life and eternity hangs in the balance over our humble and joyful recognition of this Gift. And this Gift works a miracle in our hearts and souls--transforms us. life. new life.

"But what about this?" Satan snickers.
"Wouldn't your life be better if you had this?"
"Why did He take that away, take him away?"
"If you do this, it will make it feel better, ease that pain."

Voskamp writes, "That Serpent, he's slithered with the lie that God doesn't give good but gives rocks in the mouth, leaves us to starve empty in wilderness and we'll just have to take lessons from Satan on how to take the stones of the careless God and make them into bread to feed our own hungry souls" (95-96).

Oh, no. Remember? "No! The Scriptures say, 'People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'" (Matthew 4:4).

every word.  every.single.one.
Even the ones that summoned a flood
Even the ones that commanded slaughter
Even the ones that forbid Moses to enter the Promised Land
Even the ones that nailed Jesus to a cross
Even the ones that set. me. free.

thanks. in all things. I'm learning to live like this. And oh, how full it is to live, not as a parading Pollyanna, but as a wide-eyed child of the living God.

I will notice. I will give thanks. And I will live surprised by joy.