Ann Voskamp Quotes

I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.

~ Ann Voskamp

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.

~ Ann Voskamp

I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.I hunger to taste life.God.

~ Ann Voskamp

The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.

~ Ann Voskamp

Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.

~ Ann Voskamp

They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life...God gives us time. And who has time for God?Which makes no sense.

~ Ann Voskamp

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgement and effort to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.

~ Ann Voskamp

This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.

~ Ann Voskamp

Christian hands never claspand He doesn't give gifts for gainbecause a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

~ Ann Voskamp

...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

~ Ann Voskamp

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us...

~ Ann Voskamp

Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.

~ Ann Voskamp

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.

~ Ann Voskamp

The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.

~ Ann Voskamp

How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.

~ Ann Voskamp

Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

~ Ann Voskamp

Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.

~ Ann Voskamp

The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this- all His love.

~ Ann Voskamp

At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.

~ Ann Voskamp

When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.

~ Ann Voskamp

He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).

~ Ann Voskamp

Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

~ Ann Voskamp

Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.

~ Ann Voskamp

We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.

~ Ann Voskamp

Forget the face of God, and forget your own name is Beloved.

~ Ann Voskamp

The highest form of prayer is to the goodness of God. . . . God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness.

~ Ann Voskamp

I hunger for filling in a world that is starved.

~ Ann Voskamp

But, someone, please give me—who is born again but still so much in need of being born anew—give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?

~ Ann Voskamp

Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

~ Ann Voskamp

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?

~ Ann Voskamp

Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.

~ Ann Voskamp

Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

~ Ann Voskamp

Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.

~ Ann Voskamp

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

~ Ann Voskamp

True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings, joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy transcends all other emotions.

~ Ann Voskamp

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing towards self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out. Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless.

~ Ann Voskamp

The joy of small that makes life large.

~ Ann Voskamp

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. (Page 57)

~ Ann Voskamp

How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)

~ Ann Voskamp