Go Lower

Today I want to share with you a bit from Ann Voskamp’s “One Thousand Gifts” book.

“To receive God’s gifts, to live exalted and joy filled, isn’t a function of straining higher, harder, doing more, carrying long the burdens of the super-Pharisees or ultra-saints. Receiving God’s gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower.

Is this, too, why I’m often joy starved? Why a narcissistic, gluttonous world lived emaciated? The quiet song of gratitude lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift the knees must bend humble and the hand must lie vulnerable open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give.

Is this what is happening as I learn thanksgiving, to be full of grace? I humbly give God thanks for the gifts. I practice thanksgiving. And in that place of humble thanks, God exalts and gives more gifts and more of Himself, which humbles and lays the soul down lower.

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy- nothing else. ”

I pray your day is filled with opens hands of humility and joy. ❤

Sincerely,
Hannah Diane