Finding Thanksgiving: Review of ‘One Thousand Gifts’

Thanksgiving couldn’t wait until late November this year. It showed up early when I opened One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. By chapter three, I wasn’t just reading; I had responded to the challenge that inspired the best-seller—to list one thousand blessings.

The author, a farmer’s wife and homeschooling mother of six, had plenty of reasons to decline her friend’s dare one November. She already had several growing lists: holiday menus, projects, shopping. But something deep inside her embraced the idea of writing down a thousand blessings. One thousand gifts, she called them.

Voskamp reached for a scrap of paper and scribbled down a few things to be thankful for in the moment: morning shadows; thick jam on toast; a blue jay’s cry from a spruce tree. She listed things she wouldn’t have thought to appreciate if she hadn’t paused for a moment.

The Canadian writer discovered something powerful as her list grew: true thankfulness came in the process of giving thanks. “Is this paradox . . .?” she asks. The habit of giving thanks stirred her appetite for seeking more reasons to give God glory. She also found that joy and healing came as she acknowledged God’s gifts. More than half-way to one thousand, nothing could stop her from “always looking for just one more in this unfolding of a chronicle of grace, our life story in freeze frame of thanks.”

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are takes readers into Voskamp’s world of wheat, corn and soybean fields, hungry sows, piglets and kids. And always, a sink full of dishes. She examines a soap bubble’s light, beauty and color (#362. “Suds . . . all color in sun.”) All because of the list that keeps her: “always on the hunt . . . to behold one more moment pregnant with wonder.”

Voskamp doesn’t overtly teach anything, except to herself. She writes of experiencing God in her daily life—painful examples included. Readers share her upward journey, but travel inward with her too, into deep spiritual introspection. There we can find answers to our own—less articulate—questions about God’s sovereignty.

The author’s discoveries land her in good theological territory. In another recent book, Think, John Piper says: “Reflection serves affection. Contemplation serves exultation. Together they glorify Christ to the full.”

Ann Voskamp endeavors to take her “daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral.” She refers to it more simply as “praying with eyes wide open.”

Readers of One Thousand Gifts will appreciate Voskamp’s grace-filled blessings. And they’ll likely become more aware of their own.

Blue Ribbon News special contributor Patti Richter works as journalist, writing news and feature stories, book reviews and more for many Christian publications. She lives in Heath with her husband Jim.