"One Thousand Gifts" Book Review

After my Grandparents died earlier this year, I thought it would be an appropriate time to pick up a book that had been given to my Mom for Christmas. “One Thousand Gifts” by Ann Voskamp is subtitled “A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.” While living fully is something I’m strongly convicted about, what really drew me to the book was the concept of finding joy outside of our circumstances.

Voskamp’s book is pure poetry. It goes deep and is truly a book that needs to be digested in small parts. It took me a full 5 months to read it, because I could literally read one paragraph and have enough to think about for an entire day!

The book is written in the form of vignettes from Ann’s life, followed by her ponderings. This book has challenged me immensely, to think more often of the gifts and graces God gives me each and every day.

There were so many quotes from the book that stuck with me long after I turned the last page. Here are a few of them (emphasis mine):

“God gives us time. And who has time for God? Which makes no sense. In Christ, don’t we have everlasting existence? Don’t Christians have all the time in eternity, life everlasting? If Christians run out of time—wouldn’t we lose our very own existence? If anyone should have time, isn’t it the Christ-followers?”

“I only see it because I’m looking . . .”

“The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life—in my life—is lack of thanksgiving.”

“Is it only when our lives are emptied that we’re surprised by how truly full our lives were? Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing—and are filled.”

“While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving. True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn’t negate all other emotions—joy transcends all other emotions.”

“Thankfully, God never gives what is deserved, but instead, God graciously, passionately offers gifts, our bodies, our time, our very lives. God does not give rights but imparts responsibilities—response-abilities—inviting us to respond to His love-gifts. And I know and can feel it tight: I’m responding miserably to the gift of this moment. In fact, I’m refusing it. Proudly refusing to accept this moment, dismissing it as no gift at all, I refuse God. I reject God. Why is this eucharisteo always so hard?”

“Eucharisteo means ‘to give thanks,’ and give is a verb, something that we do. God calls me to do thanks. To give the thanks away. That thanks-giving might literally become thanks-living. That our lives become the very blessings we have received. I am blessed. I can bless. Imagine! I could let Him make me the gift! I could be the joy!”

“It’s impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear. This is the anti-anxiety medicine I try to lay in my wide-open palm every day.”

“‘Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are. . . a divine choice,’ wrote Henri Nouwen. A divine choice! He chooses His children to fully live! Fully live the fullest life: the astonished gratitude, the awed joy, the flying and the free. The discipline of giving thanks, of unwrapping one thousand gifts, unwraps God’s heart bare: I choose you. Live!”

“I step over the darks and lights sorted. Why doubt the dare to fully live? Now and right here. Why not let all of life be penetrated by grace, gratitude, joy? This is the only way to welcome the Kingdom of God. I drop the basket on the wooden ironing board in the mudroom, pick my way through to the oven. Every breath’s a battle between grudgery and gratitude and we must keep thanks on the lips so we can sip from the holy grail of joy. Nowhere else in the whole tilting universe lies the joy of the Lord but in that one word.”

I highly recommend this book for 13 years and older. It probably appeals more to women, but that certainly doesn’t mean men won’t benefit from reading it! We can all learn to be more grateful, joyful, and awe-inspired by our great God!