Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare To Live Fully Right Where You Are

This is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time. Truly remarkable. Perhaps life-changing. We learn from biblical writers, poets throughout the ages, mystics, and so many others that the “world is charged with the grandeur of God,” to use Gerard Manley Hopkins familiar words. Such a world is God’s gift to us. This is exactly the kind of world Ann Voskamp opens up for us from each page of this book. She believes that God offers his gifts of grace, love, joy, and beauty because he loves us. If only we can see—and watch and listen and touch and, yes, jot it down in words—we have a chance to live life fully. We discover eucharisteo, as she says over and over, taking the cup and the bread of Christ, the ultimate gift, taking that gift from the ancient table, but as well from the mundane world in which we daily live. She worries about sounding Pollyannaish, but no, these gifts come too through pain and loss and struggle. They come when a mother of six, on an active farm, is folding clothes and scrubbing pans and preparing a meal. We are constantly surprised to find once again, yes, there it is, this stunning grace shining out in the midst of our daily lives, offered freely and lavishly. Oh my, and all of this expressed in a language so rich it takes your breath away. This woman can wear you out with her intensity, but she has given me a gift that may have changed the way I see things for a long time to come. I highly recommend this remarkable book—for anyone—isn’t that each one of us?—who wants to live fully.