For November 18th:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” Jeremiah 31:3 NIV

            “…One thousand gifts tuned me to the beat. It really is like C.S. Lewis argued: that the most fundamental thing is not how we think of God but rather what God thinks of us: ‘How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.’ Years of Christian discipleship, Bible study, churchgoing had been about me thinking about God; practicing eucharisteo was the very first I had really considered at length what God thought of me—this ridiculous and relentless pursuing love, so bold. Everywhere, everything, Love!

            Giving thanks awakens me to a God giving Himself, the naked, unashamed passion, God giving Himself to me—for me—a surrender of love. ‘Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are…a divine choice,’ wrote Henri Nouwen. A divine choice! He chooses His children to fully live! Fully live the fullest life: the astonished gratitude, the awed joy, the flying and the free. The discipline of giving thanks, of unwrapping one thousand gifts, unwraps God’s heart bare: I choose you. Live!

…

I empty to become full. Full of grace…to fully live.

            Illumination, the intermediary step in the path to full life in God, so said the ancients. The seeker sees. What the ancient saints called a vision of heaven, a way of seeing that draws one closer to God. Eucharisteo had been exactly this for me, opening my eyes to a way of seeing, to a realization that belief is, in essence, a way of the eyes. The one thousand presents wake me to the presence of God—but more so, living eucharisteo, living in thanks, had done the far harder work of keeping me awake to Him. I began to see that nothing I am counts for anything but all that I count of Him counts for everything—seeing eyes might illuminate the glory of Christ in all.”

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, 2009