A couple of weeks ago, a friend gave me a book entitled “One Thousand Gifts,” by Ann Voskamp. In it, Ann chronicles a heart breaking, yet miraculous, story of her trek from despair to freedom. Three weeks after her mother had given birth to their fourth child, when Ann was 12, her 4 year old little sister was run over by a farm truck and killed. Ann describes the gruesome scene her family lived out as they held the small broken body in the aftermath of the accident. She then goes on to describe the agony that her family went through as they weathered the hell of losing a sister and daughter. In her words...
“We laid her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name-- Aimee. It means 'loved one'- how she was. With the laying of the gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives. Closed to any notion of grace.”
And so began many years of darkness for Ann and her family. There was no getting over it-- no getting past it. The horrific pictures of the past haunted them all. Their hopes for the future dashed. Their existence consisted of being trapped in a cloud of pain, suffocated by loneliness and despair. Through it all, Ann was a Christian, but as she put it, “I may have said yes to God- yes to Christianity- but really, I lived the NO.”
She lived in darkness...for years... Until she began to count her blessings... literally... Specifically. She resolved to write down 1000 blessings. They did not come in the form “God, thanks for the food” but rather “Thank you for hot, fresh baked, bread and butter after a hard day's work”
And as she began to “pay attention” carefully to the detailed work of the Lord all around her, the gratitude began to “work it's magic” into the depths of her soul-- a great rescue was taking place! A miraculous healing began in her. What she had tried so hard, and failed, to do for herself, God began to accomplish through the power of Thanksgiving. Through the metamorphasis, joy becan to infuse her and change the way in which she viewed life. Her faith, once simply about information, ritual or activity became a Person-- Jesus Christ. And as He brought her through the “fellowship of the suffering,” taking her sins and her sorrows and making them His own, she began to experience a life of fullness “right where she was.” Rather than looking forward to something better in the future, she was able to find great satisfaction and contentment in the relationship of the present!
The amazing thing about this story is that the same God who rescued (and continues to rescue) Ann is willing to do the same for us, in our own story. Notice, though, that the key to unlocking the miracle was the response of God to the gratitude and recognition extended toward Him by one of His hurting children. It's almost as if He can't keep Himself from tending to a grateful heart that holds onto Him by a strand of faith- be it ever so thin. So, you see, there is great power in the act of thanksgiving. For as we count our blessings, we find that we begin to fully live!
Pastor Pete