Perspective Priority

I love it when God gives me the same theme over and over and over.  I really know it is Him reaching out to me and I really start paying attention and letting it soak in... hoping transformation will come and take me over.

In the recent weeks, "perspective" is what He has been showing me again and again.  It started as I began to read, "One Thousand Gifts," by Ann Voskamp.  It smacked me in the face and left a sting that sunk to the heart.  Our perspective is powerful... so very powerful and is something so easily overlooked.  "Eucharisteo" and the knowledge of it transformed Voskamp right where she was.  I don't even know for sure how to pronounce the word but I fell in love with it and the gift it brings.  It's the central key to abundant Christian living.  It's hard to put flesh on it sometimes.  It's hard to live out sometimes.  It's hard to remember sometimes.  It's hard to see sometimes.  But it is where the rich beauty of Christ abides.  Thanksgiving.  Giving thanks... in EVERYTHING and AT ALL TIMES.  Sounds so simple and yet as I watch God walk her through it and I take small steps towards it, I fail again and again.

How do I offer thanksgiving when my son and daughter are fighting for the 30th time today?  How do I offer thanksgiving when she is back talking me for the 20th time and I am losing grip by the moment?  How do I offer thanksgiving as I watch children suffer and wait... wait to be wanted... wait to be rescued... wait to be loved and to know love?  How do I offer thanksgiving as I try to get two kids out the door to school on time and the dog vomits all over the carpet?

Then it smacked me again in my devotion, "At His Feet," by Christ Tiegreen.  He explains how the crucifixion of Christ "appeared" to be a tragedy, the darkest and worst day in history.  It appeared as if the enemy had won.  He goes as far to say that the enemy himself even thought he had won.  BUT God had another plan... and Christ's death was a necessary part of it.  It was a plan of redemption, salvation, justification, love personified... freedom... the path to life everlasting. The day was one of the most powerful and God filled days of the universe.  However the disciples didn't know it.  Mary didn't know it.  And Satan didn't know it.  There was no thanksgiving. Only despair, mourning, hiding.  But Christ knew it as did the Father.  They had the correct perspective.  And it changed everything. 

Perspective.  C.S.Lewis says it very clearly: "If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad."
Perspective.  Such a deep word... with deep power.

One of my prayers is that I see things with my spiritual eyes and not my physical eyes.  This helps me keep the right perspective.  But can thanksgiving also keep my perspective where it needs to be to experience and reflect the life that God has prepared for me?  Can I stand with hands open and receive His gifts... whatever they may be... and praise and thank Him no matter what?  Can I keep my hands open as Abby struggles with seizures and give thanksgiving in that... in that moment that I am given... that she is given?  Can I keep my hands open and keep receiving the moments when all I want to do is run and scream and hide?  Can I be transformed by eucharisteo?  I am going to try.  Voskamp had enticed me to try and I will begin my journey of counting my one thousand gifts on January first on my blog, One Beautiful Life.

I want my perspective to become saturated with thanksgiving.  I want it to become thanksliving.  I want transformation.

"The quiet song of gratitude, eucharisteo, lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift the knees must bend humble and the hand must lie vulnerably open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give.  That whenever I am parched and dry, I must go lower and kneel low in thanks."  Ann Voskamp, "One Thousand Gifts."