Reflections - Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts

Losing is certain.  What does that mean as I live the Christian life?  What do I think of God's grace, when good things come and when bad things come?  Through celebrations or through tragedies?  I don't believe that we can or should always just say,"We have the hope of eternity!" and get on with it.  Of course, we do have that hope, but we also have the promise that when God says he saves us it starts now, not after our bodies die, nor just after the second coming of Christ.  We have new life now.  Even though we still live in this fallen and broken world, where so many things happen that don't make any sense, or that kind of make sense but hurt anyway.  Whether it's the death of a child because of accident or illness, or the death of a beloved grandparent after a very long and wonderful life...there is pain in it.  When someone loses a job, or makes a bad choice and ends up in trouble with the law, or even just does a naughty thing and writes on the wall that her daddy just painted for her sister (guess who?)...those things cause heartache or hurt another person. 

We lose.  We gain.  We lose loved ones.  We lose money.  We lose homes, clothes, precious possessions...think of the fires, flooding, or robberies that unfairly and unexpectedly steal not only material belongings but joy that comes from having furniture or jewelry or even photographs or journals from mothers, fathers, grandparents, and further back.  We gain perspective.  We gain a sense of the futility of holding on to things.  We gain an awareness of our own mortality.

We know and we learn that we ought not hold tightly to the things around us that we can see and grasp in our hands.  Our eyes must instead be focused on God and our hands must be stretched towards him, clinging to his words, his promises.  That must be more than a nice sounding, platitudinal sentiment that we can flip out any old time in any circumstance no matter what.  What does it look like?  How does that look in a life?

Ann Voskamp writes of thanking, seeing, trusting.  I am learning.  There is a lot to learn.  I'll be thinking and writing more.