Remember, recall, remind, retell, relate, recollect and, of course, recount all the that God has done for us, both personally and colletively throughout time. It is the joy duty.
Well, One Thousand Gifts is certainly a gift from God that needs to be recounted. Here are my favorite quotes from chapters 4-6.
A Sanctuary of Time (4)- Here was my own practice and process of this chapter: Time Dayenu.
Now on to quotes...
"On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur." - Evelyn Underhill
"Hurry always empties a soul."
"Weigh down this moment in time with attention full..."
"This is where God is. In the present. I AM - His very name."
"...time is only of the essence, because time is the essence of God, I AM."
"Thanks makes now a sanctuary."
"When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God."
"Entering fully into the moment can overwhelm, a river running wild. I will forget, and again, and again, but today I do remember. I breathe and I reel and I hold my ground and my tongue in this torrent coming down. I've staked my claim to the miracle." (emphasis mine)
"How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?"
"I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God."
Chapter Five - The inspiration for Secret Garden.
"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living."
"Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed...I will lose every single person I have ever loved... You may suffer loss but in Me is anything ever lost, really? Isn't everything that belongs to Christ also yours?"
"And every moment is a message from the Word-God who can't stop writing his heart."
"To read His message in moments, I'll need to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world."
"...I know all our days are struggle and warfare (Job 14:14) and that the spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good. The liar defiantly scrawls his graffiti across God's glory, and I heave to enjoy God . . . and Satan strangles, and I whiten knuckles to grasp real Truth and fix that beast to the floor." (emphasis mine)
"Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps."
"And it's the Word of God that turns the rocks in the mouth to the loaves on the tongue."
"Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way... It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace."
"He became ugly that we might become beauty. The God of the Mount of Transfiguration cannot cease His work of transfiguring moments - making all that is dark, evil, empty into that which is all light, grace, full."
"And if all work of transfiguring the ugly into the beautiful pleases God, it is a work of beauty."
"...and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty."
"All is grace only because all can transfigure."
Chapter 6 - This chapter was not a one-day read for me. I didn't walk away with one neatly wrapped nugget, rather, echoes of this chapter permeated the days following the readings.
The White Load and Learning to Speak reverberated from this chapter.
"I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need the refilling."
"The only place we have to come to before we die is the place of seeing God. This is what I am famished for: more of the God-glory. I whisper with the blind beggar, "Lord, I want to see" (Luke 18:41)."
"Beauty is all that is glory and God is Beauty embodied, glory manifested. This is what I crave: I hunger for Beauty. Is that why I must keep up the hunt? When I cease the beauty hunt, is that why I begin to starve, waste away?"
"Eucharisteo is everywhere and I want to see eucharisteo everywhere and I want to remember how badly I really want to see. Here. How could I have forgotten how badly I wanted this? To bow down and rightly worship." (Bolding added.)
"How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God. How we look determines how we live... if we live."
"The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the One seeing God without. God is both the object of my seeing and the subject who does the act of all real seeing, the Word lens the inner eye wears."
"It is strange, how joy pains... God expanding, widening and deepening my inner spaces. Is that why joy hurts - God stretching us open to receive more of Himself?"
"For God is happiest of all."
"How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral?"
"Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing."
"I could live blind, either in black or in blaze. I'll be all eye, all blinded by glory."
It is an amazing book, isn't it? So nice to meet you via Ann's blog. May your week be full of wonder and your eyes be wide open to all He gives!
ReplyDelete