Friday, July 27, 2012

Deeper longings.

I am set ablaze like a fire wild in the wind. My heart leaps at the expectation of the coming season, and I can certainly feel the change rolling in peaceful violent on the horizon. This is the embarkation. Nothing will be the same.

I have started reading the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I have found what feels like the missing link to the puzzle I have struggled for years to piece together. In my heart and upon my lips, I am finding gratitude like a river rushing forward from my being. She calls it as the Greek Eucharisteo. Something even lays hidden in that word that longs for thankfulness. I can hear it every time I speak it out loud. Eucharisteo. Eucharisteo! The word itself means "to give thanks". And it is mentioned every time Jesus gives thanks. Thanks the Father. Gives thanks and breaks bread. Gives thanks and multiplies! This word of grandeur. This word of gratitude! How simple, and yet greatly complex. The fullness of the realization of beauty lies resting within this word. I have missed it. Most of my saved life I have missed the most important part! My gratitude towards the One who bestows all gifts!

I feel like Sherlock uncovering the mystery. My magnifying lens large before my eyes, searching for the pieces that lay waiting for me to find them. The keys to JOY!!! I have found myself with pen and paper, wide eyed and amazed like a child, at the gifts God has bestowed upon me in my every day. These little treasures that I have passed up in the busyness of life. The moments that I was sure to have lost in time. I have beheld God in His magnificence! In the HERE and NOW! As Voskamp says in her book. I am getting to know the I Am. The very present God. The God that resides in the now moments. The gifts He's just longing for us to acknowledge. Not once a year Christmas gifts, but everyday treasures that He's hidden in our self-proclaimed mundane. Beauty.

Call me a treasure hunter. For Glory! For the gifts that make my heart skip a beat. My heart has longed for me to commit to such simplicity! And so it has begun, my journal, my pen and I are embarking on a journey to find one thousand numbered gifts in my every day to give God the glory for. My eyes strain to find the simplest... my heart skips a beat when I find another one! Tonight #13 the way the clouds are set in wisps at sunset. coral hues and baby blues. So simple and poetic. Just like the sky He has strung before our eyes. Yet I gaze into sunsets 26 years and never notice like I do tonight. The beauty that's been there all along, just waiting for me to give thanks for it! Eucharisteo.

I suppose it's not even about the thanks giving that is being made, but rather what God is doing in my heart. A miracle! Only God can come and change the heart of man. And not the "try to change, but set in old senile way" but real, life-altering, gasping for air when you've gone too deep, change. Voskamp explains it cleverly clear in her book. Thanksgiving always precedes the miracle! "Father, I thank that you have heard me..." John 11:41 And then the miracle of a dead man rising! Thanksgiving raises the dead! Not to say that my heart has been dead, but it would sometimes begin to smell of the flesh that has gone without life for far too long. But there it is. The miracle. The life change. Who could say to Lazarus in the moment of blood surging life into his veins again, "Hey Laz, you're just a dead man, you'll never change!". Never! The man felt the rush of breath in his lungs after being emptied. He would never be the same. And oh, it began with the simple word. Eucharisteo. How beautiful.

I will try and post again soon as I travel further into the world of beauty and hunting for the gifts! Please get this book and see for yourself what I'm talking about. Your heart will not regret it. He's a good Father, and every good and perfect gift is HIS!

With all marvel and wonder,
Krystle


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