"Kick" the Bucket List

⁴ For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, ⁵ because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.-1 Timothy 4:4-5

In Pastor Chad's sermon yesterday he referenced a book called 1000 Gifts, by Ann Voskamp.  It interested me enough to look it up on Amazon which interested me enough to read the first chapter which totally sold me.  This is from Amazon's product description of the book:

Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. 'How,' Ann wondered, 'do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long---and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?' In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God's gifts. It's only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted ... a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved --- by God. Let Ann's beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come live the best dare of all!

I just loved the reference to the "bucket lists" that has become so popular in our present culture.  Don't get me wrong, I think bucket lists are fun and have a short list of my own.  But those lists appeal to our "wanna, needa, gotta have more" mentality.  They remind us of what we don't have or haven't had the opportunity or courage to do.  They make us forget to be grateful for what we do have.


In the first chapter of 1000 Gifts, Ann explains:

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.  Satan, he wanted more.  More power, more glory.  Ultimately, in his essence, Satan is an ingrate.  And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden.  Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity;  the sin of ingratitude.  Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave.  Isn’t that the catalyst of all my sins?  Our fall was, has always been, and always will, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives.  We hunger for something more, something other.

I have decided that each day I am going to make my list of blessings... each day, because there is so much to be thankful for in one day that the list will be so long that I will need to start fresh each day.  

Oh,  and I'm deleting my bucket list.

Father,

Make my heart truly grateful for the blessings of today.  Amen.

Joys:  Waking up healthy this morning; a vehicle of which I can be fairly certain will start and get me where I need to go today; a job I truly love; Richard being home and having a job to go to in his "in between military orders" time... and the list continues...