The Last Review Online, One of Many Reviews in Life

So the end of One Thousand Gifts - Chapters 10 & 11. I must confess that I think this book was meant to be a ten chapter book. The book is wonderful but for some specific analogies in the 11th chapter to which I have an aversion and afterall 10 is such a nice round number. :-)

Here are the quotes that God used in the last two chapters to provoke and encourage me:

10

"A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life of acting the love of Christ."

"Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace. But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more: it is giving grace away."

"The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains... You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause." Dorothy Sayers

"Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all."

"It's the astonishing truth that while I serve Christ, it is He who serves me. Jesus Christ still lives with a towel around His waist, bent in service to His people . . . in service to me, as I serve, that I need never serve in my own strength....He calls us to serve, and it is Him whom we serve, but He, very God, kneels down to serve us as we serve. The servant-hearted never serve alone."

"God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him."

"[W]ith every one of the thousand, endless jobs, I become the gift to God and to others because this work is the public God serving, the daily liturgy of thanks, the completing of the Communion service with my service."

11

"With every grace, He sings, "You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you" (Isaiah 43:4).

"[T]he 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." C.S. Lewis

"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."

"Little had I known that counting one thousand gifts would launch me on a thousand-year-old journey of transformation."

"He's calling me to graft on, become one with the True Vine, the vine the biblical symbol of joy, festivity... fullness."

"Before I ever breathed or the earth ever spun, the love within the Godhead orbited, Father loving Son 'before the creation of the world' (John 17:24 NIV) and when I am in union with Christ, I too am lavished with the love the Father has for the Son. In union, that love is mine- ours!"

"Eucharisteo-communion- that hound of heaven, He won't relent, always, everywhere, eucharisteo, opening the eyes to God."

"Is there a greater way to love the Giver than to delight wildly in His gifts?"

"Communion with God, what was broken in the Garden, this is wholly restored when I want the God-communion more than I want the world-consumption."

"O my soul, thou are capable of enjoying God, woe to thee if thou are contented with anything less than God." Francis de Sales

"He will break bread and I will take and the world is his feast! and He is love! and nothing will keep my hand from filling with His."
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Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
-Ps. 68:19

Do I believe it? Do I live it? Oh God, I am grateful! Help thou my ingratitude!

Join me.