A book from God...

 Today has been one of those days... ...one of those days when you just take a step back and wonder what God has in mind... Because in my heart, I know He is good... ...but I can't help but think that if it were up to me, I would do things differently...  Of course, it's not up to me.  So...my part is to trust Him.  God knew that I was going to have this day. It was all part of His plan when, a couple of months ago, I pre-ordered a book from Amazon.  A book that I pretty much forgot that I ordered.  But a book that God knew that I needed today. Here are a few excerpts from this book.  I hope it will encourage you...and maybe even entice you to get your own copy.  Because I've only read one chapter, but I can tell it's a good book. "Can there be a good God?  A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins?  Where is God, really?  How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind?  Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away.  Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt?"  "Like all beliefs, you simply live them... We live with our hands clenched tight...  No, God...  Is this the toxic air of the world, this atmosphere we inhale, burning into our lungs, this No, God?  No, God, we won't take what you give... No, God, this is ugly and this is a mess and can't You get anything right and just haul this pain out of here and I'll take it from here, thanks..." "...I believe the Serpant's hissing lie, the repeating refrain through the ages: God isn't good...  Doubting God's goodness, distrusting His intent, discontented with what He's given, we desire more...  Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives.  We hunger for something more, something other...  We were lured by the deception that there was more to a full life...  And true, there was more to see:  the ugliness we hadn't beheld...the loss we hadn't known." "It is one thing to choose to take the grace offered at the cross.  But to choose to live as one filled with His grace? ...It is a choice.  Choose to say yes to what He freely gives...  If I don't, I am still making a choice.  The choice not to." "That which tears open our souls...may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond.  To Him.  To the God whom we endlessly crave.  But how?  How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing-through-to-God places? ... How do I give up resentment for gratitude, gnawing anger for spilling joy?  Self-focus for God-communion.  To fully live--to live full of grace and joy and all that is beauty eternal.  It is possible...  I now see and testify.  So this story--my story.  A dare to an emptier, fuller life."    All excerpts taken from "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp:  buy it on Amazon.com