The End of the Book

Between Sunday and Tuesday, between loads of laundry and a sick baby held between my arms, I finished One Thousand Gifts.

In the book Ann tells about recording the 1000th gift. As she gets close she says "it has seemed like it might be over all too soon... Come early winter [she] jotted haltlingly, not wanting it to end."

I relate. Except it's not the end of my list I am approaching, but the end of the book. And so, by way of prolonging the joy and challenge found in this book, here is a compilation of some of my favorites quotes from the first three chapters of One Thousand Gifts (favorite quotes from the other chapters will follow, too):

CHAPTER ONE

"We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God."

"From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose, - our return to our full glory."

"For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna- a substance whose name literally means "What is it?" Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling... More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don't comprehend. They find soul-filling in the inexplicable... They eat the mystery."


CHAPTER TWO

"Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur?"

"The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks."

"Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning "joy." Joy."

"The only place we need to see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."

"Sozo means salvation. It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo- the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks."

"And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives. Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration."

CHAPTER THREE

"Long, I am a woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall - dicontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied."

"A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit." Erasmus

"Naming is Edenic...naming offers the gift of recognition."

"I am Adam and I discover my meaning and God's, and to name is to learn the language of Paradise."

"God is not in need of magnifying by us so small, but the reverse. It's our lives that are little and we have falsely inflated self, and in thanks we decrease and the world returns right."

"Prayer without ceasing is only possible in a life of continual thanks. How did I ever think there was another way to enter into His courts but with thanksgiving?"