Monday, February 28, 2011

Multiply Your Time...with Thanksgiving

Monday hadn't even started and I was already lamenting the week. Our schedule the next two has exploded, and I'm already feeling the pressure. Snug under the covers I began the next chapter of One Thousand Gifts, and was astonished by the words. The sentences. God speaking into my life with the keystrokes of another.

"I speak it to God: I don't really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven or wild to get it all done - yesterday. In a world with cows to buy and fields to see and work to do, in the deep and blink of the twenty-first century, with its "live in the moment" buzz phrase that none of the whirl-weary seem to know how to do, who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync? To have the time to grab the jacket off the hook and time to go out to all air and sky and green and time to wonder at all of them in all this light, this time refracting in prism.


I just want time to do my one life well." (page 67 & 68 One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp)

As I read those words I wanted to shout, "YES!" And would have, if not for the slumbering man exhaling the day next to me. That's what I want! Time. Time enough to feel like I'm not herding the day away from me. Time enough to feel like I soak up the sticky kisses, the giggling hugs and the warm breezes of life.

How do I get that Lord? Tell me how to get to enough time. Please.

"Like the God-Man counting His too-few loaves and not-enough fishes. The one I remember form felt boards and figures pressed out smooth, where 'Jesus then took the loaves, and gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted' (John 6:11 NIV, emphasis added).


Gave thanks. He'd done it there too? Again? I'd missed it and all of my life?


I'd never considered those two words, the bridge words there in the middle, the crossing over that took the not enough and made it enough.


Gave thanks....Jesus embraces His not enough...He gives thanks...And there is more than enough. More than enough!


And who doesn't need a miracle like that every day? Thanksgiving makes more time." (page 71, 72)


The chapter to goes on to speak of our thanksgiving multiplying our time. That when we're wholly in the moment, looking for the blessing, be thankful for the moments of God that we slow down. That our time slows down.

A flash of lightening. The sound of the rain brings me out of the pages of the book into my dark bedroom.  I love that sound. The sound of spring rain. The tapping of the first few drops of heavenly refreshment.


As if a period on the page, I'd been reading I began to think of all the other things I love. The moments I cannot wait to be in the midst of and are gone too soon.

At the beginning of this long week and weeks to come I am choosing to slow time down. To be aware of the blessings in the moment.

My list continues....

30. a broken in sweatshirt
31. heated seats
35. homeschooling
40. Paxton's "gabillion kisses" game
43. William's hand on the small of my back
46. waking up with praise songs in your head
48. stolen moments with Jesus

Oh, Father, let us linger with You. In this parched world, let us soak our moments in thanksgiving, so that we might live them for all they are worth. Amen.


How about you? What's on your list?

2 comments:

Kissed by the Creator said...

I need to get this book. I was so blessed by your post just now. No lie I just made a HUGE list for the next two weeks as being away 4 days next week and juggling 3 kids schedules so my busy husband can manage to get kid 1,2 and 3 to points A, B and C. Lordy, I needed this. I marvel contantly at God's timing in my life. Between this and the 2/28 Jesus Calling entry. He truly knows my NAME!

Isabel said...

He does know your name, love! Don't you love when God reaches into our crazy life and says, "breathe. be still. I'm here."

Get the book. It is life changing. Seriously.