This summer I carried around “The Hunger Games” and “One Thousand Gifts”. Seems like an unlikely pair, right? Sometimes I was in the mood to read one and sometimes the other, and sometimes I was in the mood to read some of both. If you know anything about these books you know that they are both good, but quite the opposite. And then I read the very end of “Mockingjay” (the final book in The Hunger Games series), the ending of the epilogue….
“I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.” -pg. 398, by Suzanne Collins.
Although this is not exactly what Ann Voskamp means with her 1000 gift lists, it was a reminder to keep counting. Even when the world and what is happening in it could seem a nightmare, there is hope. Jesus is that Hope. He is that Goodness. Just and Holy, and Good.
Counting the thanks might seem a bit tedious or repetitive at times, but it is an running account of grace.
Let the game continue…
Much more than game; as Ann says, habit.
The habit that is grace as it counts grace.
The grace that changes.
The hard, the lovely;
pausing and turning it back, to praise….
The One.
