I don’t know how good you are about reading blogs in your Google Reader or other reader, but sometimes I get busy and then wind up having 645 posts in my reader (seriously). It then takes me several staying-up-really-late nights to catch up. Tonight when I read (In)courage‘s posts, I realized – oops – that I had gotten behind viewing the book club videos for Ann Voscamp’s wonderful One Thousand Gifts book.
Since Ann is the author, she explains best how this book and the list of writing down 1,000 things she was thankful for each day actually started (video #3 below). If you are part of this book club, did you already begin writing your list? (Or are you already through?!) I finally started mine after catching up with the videos tonight.
We are now on chapter 5. (I was already there in the book because I read ahead several chapters the first night I received it in the mail!)
You can write your list on sticky notes, on a dry erase board, on a wall, or in a pretty journal. You can link up with other bloggers in this club. You can write 3 or 30 things for which you’re thankful.
The items on your list don’t need to be “spiritual” in nature (isn’t everything spiritual in some sense?), but they can – and should- include ordinary, everyday events. For example, my first three are:
- Our beautiful children
- My ultra-fine, black ink Sharpie pen writing on crisp, white paper
- Ann’s book with this book club video series at (In)courage.
If you haven’t started the book club yet, it’s not too late. You can begin writing (seriously late) your list tonight – like me. 🙂 Or you don’t have to do it at all. Sometimes I think that blogging can be a sophisticated type of high school cliques. But I choose to do this book club because as Ann said in video 2, the list changes you. And God only knows I need changing! It creates a thankful heart in you and it lets you see how much God loves you – it’s His list of love gifts to you and the gifts are endless. You don’t have to, and probably won’t, stop when you reach # 1,000.
I also love how Ann said that she began photographing items that were on her list to capture the moment and the beauty, and that soon after photographing cheese, her son Malachi got a point-and-shoot camera and took a picture of cheese, too. Our children can incorporate this into their lives to cultivate more grateful, alive hearts alongside us.
Video # 5 addresses how we find God in the dark – how do we give thanks when things are very bad? Is God still good then?
Below are videos # 3 (where Ann explains how it started) and the current video # 5. Enjoy!
Video 3 of One Thousand Gifts book club
One Thousand Gifts- Chapter Three from Bloom (in)courage on Vimeo.
Video 5 of One Thousand Gifts book club
One Thousand Gifts: Chapter 5 from Bloom (in)courage on Vimeo.
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