In Chapter 6 (“What Do You Want? The Place of Seeing God”) of One Thousand Gifts, author Ann Voskamp discusses why she continues keeping her list of things she’s thankful for, despite reaching her initial goal:
“I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget. I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need refilling. . . . for who can gather manna but once, hoarding, and stow away sustenance in the mind for all of the living?”
Jesus knows what we want, what we need. Ann posits that the sole question we need to circle back to again and again is the question Jesus asked the blind beggar in Luke 18:41- “What do you want (me to do for you)?” Our answer to that question, the author emphasizes, is not spontaneous but rather comes in “strata, gradations of understanding”. Indeed, we may first feel the answer before it finds shape in images and words. For Ann, the bottom line is this- to see more of God’s glory.
May we also whisper with the blind beggar, “Lord, I want to see.”
