One Thousand Gifts

(originally posted on the Bluebird blog, here)

Ann Voskamp over at Holy Experience has suggested a really cool challenge that has caught my attention, its called One Thousand Gifts. It reminds me so deeply of that "checking the mail" for our awaiting "love letters from God" that lets us know just how HERE He is with us!

This is one challenge I think I'm actually going to do! Here is Anne's description of it:

"A List of a Thousand Things, beginning with #1. I am daily jotting down items on my "Thousand Gifts List," working, one-by-one, up to a thousand gifts. Not of gifts I want. But of gifts I have.

As the moments slip down the hour glass of time, I am scratching down the gifts--just as they happen, as they arrive, as they are unwrapped--that He has given that make my life grace, the daily graces that He gives in an infinite number of ways, that stir me.

"...windmills lazying in twilight's last breeze.... soft wool sweaters with turtle neck collars.... the faint smell of cattle and straw...."

I am seeing things I have never seen before, atuned and aware of this constant, endless stream of gifts from His hand. I am one waking from slumber....from the stupor of indifference and ignorance. I have sight, fresh and keen---the world is new and full of His gifts.

Too often I miss Him, oblivious, blind. I don't see all the good things that He is giving me, gracing me with, brushing my life with. True, He is everywhere, always. But maybe, before The Gift List, I thought of Him as further off, not so close. When I started to see all the things that I love bestowed upon me, I started to see Him as near, present, everywhere, showering me with good things. Seeing the things I love all around me gives me eyes to see that I am loved, that He loves me."

So my own little list will be created bit by bit, and I can't wait to see the lists of others here. I think Anne has a GREAT idea with this!

(Top image is from 2 Hearts Network Graphics (this is a great site!) and the bottom image is the Crab-Apple Fairy from Cicely Mary Barker, will have to look up where I found it)