{"id":1914,"date":"2011-07-03T23:41:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T03:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2011-07-03T23:49:39","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T03:49:39","slug":"joy-in-small-miracles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=1914","title":{"rendered":"Joy in Small Miracles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always <em>given<\/em>, never grasped.  God <em>gives<\/em> gifts and I <em>give<\/em> thanks and I unwrap the gift given: <em>joy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It is true, I never stop wanting to learn the hard <em>eucharisteo<\/em> for the deathbeds and dark skies and the prodigal sons.  But I accept this is the way to begin, and all hard things come in due time and with practice&#8230;.  Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant &#8212; a seed &#8212; this plants the giant miracle.  The miracle of <em>eucharisteo,<\/em> like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful.  Do not disdain the small.  The whole of the life &#8212; even the hard &#8212; is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole.  These are new language lessons, and I live them out.  There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things.  It is this:  to give thanks in this one small thing.  The moments will add up.<\/p>\n<p>I, too, had read it often, the oft-quoted verse:  &#8220;And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ&#8221; (Ephesians 5:20).  And I, too, would nod and say straight-faced, &#8220;I&#8217;m thankful for everything.&#8221;  But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.  A lifetime of sermons on &#8220;thanks in all things&#8221; and the shelves sagging with books on these things and I testify: life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Ann Voskamp, <em>One Thousand Gifts<\/em>, p. 57<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy. It is true, I never stop wanting to learn the hard eucharisteo for the deathbeds and dark skies and the prodigal sons. But I accept this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,35,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gratitude","category-growth","category-joy","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}