Ann Voskamp Quotes - Page 2

You were made for the place where your real #‎ passion meets #‎ compassion because there lies your real purpose.

I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full? The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction.

Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

God reveals Himself in rearview mirrors. And I've an inkling that there are times when we need to drive a long, long distance, before we can look back and see God's back in the rearview mirror. Maybe sometimes about as far as heaven -- that kind of distance.

A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

What was intended to harm, God intended it all for good. And no matter what intends to harm you, God's arms have you. You can never be undone.

On the night He was betrayed Jesus broke bread and lifted it up and gave THANKS. If Jesus can give thanks in that, can we not give thanks in all?

Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?

As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

The cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it’s supposed sophistication, it’s cynicism that’s simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is to see the cracks? The sages and prophets, the disciples and revolutionaries, they are the ones up on the ramparts, up on the wall pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and to the Blazing God who never sleeps.

We're not giving what we're called to give, unless that giving affects how we live - affects what we put on our plate and where we make our home and hang our hat and what kind of threads we've got to have on our back. Surplus Giving is the leftover you can afford to give; Sacrificial Giving is the love gift that changes how you live - because the love of Christ has changed you. God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.

Be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness.

I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain...again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless.

Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces.

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.

You've got to use the life you've been given to give others life

You can give up the need to compete in the world- when you accept being complete in Christ.

Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.

You, who were made by Love, made for love-- be still and know and watch love come down.