Grateful and Generous

I am about to come to the end of another reading of "1000 Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  Off and on today I have picked up the book, read a few pages, marked my progress, and went on to something else before coming back once again.  While I cannot say that I have received a thousand blessings today as I read, I can say with all honesty that I have been blessed by the way she puts her thoughts into words.  Today in a section based on the word which tells us it is better to give than to receive, she wrote, "The whole of Creation chooses this.  The leaves of the maple tree freely unfurl oxygen, clouds overhead grow pregnant with rain, the soil of our fields offer up yield."   

The Word of God we hear speaking from her reflections about Creation remind us that we are not here to hold, but to turn loose.  We are not here to live with hands clenched tightly around what we call mine, but with hands open to give what we know to be His.  Voskamp tells us as one of the many voices of God that we are to live in sync with the rest of Creation.  How else can we live when we come to realize that all gifts and blessings come from God?  How else can we live when we realize that we are not set apart from Creation, but we are a part of it which means that life is best when we are present in it as is the rest of creation?  We fulfill our purpose by being who we are and by allowing our lives to become expressions of giving that is both generous and life giving.  

It is not an easy Word for us to hear.  We are told by our society that our value is related to what we have and not what we give.  The poor person who gives little may in the end be giving more proportionally than the one who is rich.  The rich may give generous looking gifts, but the poor ones among us may be the ones giving the more generous gifts.  The important thing for all of us is to live as all the rest of Creation was created to be in existence which means that we need ask God to help us change the values which control our life so that we can be making a life giving difference in the place where He has put us.