It is by no means an easy read and I want to read it again to really listen to what all it has to say. I picked it up at my local library because I had seen a lot of talk online about it and I thought "why not" since it's free. But I will be running to get my own personal copy soon. Ann Voskamp is a Godly woman if there ever was one.
Sure she has had some very hard trials in her past and carries that baggage, just as we all do. But the way she let the Word speak to her is just incredible.
I will shut up now and quote some of the passages from the book that hit me hardest.
Page 35: "Eucharisteo--thanksgiving--always precedes the miracle."
Page 88: "I read the faded ink below, and I remember what I felt the day I copied these words, "Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?" (Amos 3:6). And I feel it again today and I breathe: A good God plans everything. Everything. So a good God can only...make plans for good? He only gives good gifts? A thing of evil cannot be created by a good God?"
Page 148: "Without trust in the good news of Jesus, without trust in the good news of God's saving work even in this moment, without an active, moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe? This is the trust I lack: to know that if disaster strikes, He carries me even there. Trust in the wholeness of the gospel--including this moment, good news too--and be saved. Choose stress, worry, anxiety, reject what God has given now, which is good news too --refuse to trust--and be condembed."
"I've just begun to feel around the edges of it, here in crumbling economics, the fretfullness of parenting, the dizziness of the twenty-first-century spin. Just begun to realize it, and it catches in the throat: If authentic, saving belief is the act of trusting, then to choose stress is an act of disbelief...atheism. Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism."
Page 154:"Remember and give thanks? For what? What if remembering doesn't kindle gratitude? What if remembering just leaves third-degree burns? The words sear. I know their voices and I remember their faces and the sun spills from the window glass, slants gold across steering wheel. Eyes on the road, yellow dashing like a line on hold, I wait, just wait. In the wait, memories blister. And in the still, Spirit comes and He whispers my name. Christ. And I see a world through His lens: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32 NIV). He gave us Jesus. Jesus! Gave Him up for us all. If we have only one memory, isn't this one enough? Why is this the memory I most often take for granted? He cut open the flesh of the God-Man and let the blood. He washed our grime with the bloody grace. He drove the iron ore through His own vein. Doesn't that memory alone suffice? Need there be anything more? If God didn't withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?"
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