Eucharisteo

You might have noticed that I added a new tab at the top of my blog called One Thousand Gifts.  I've been reading the book with the same name, as I've mentioned in several posts, and I've decided to join Ann Voskamp in training my mind to see reasons for giving thanks everywhere I look.  Here is why we're doing it:

"The face of Jesus flashes.  Jesus, the God-Man with his own termination date.  Jesus, the God-Man who came to save me from prisons of fear and guilt and depression and sadness.  With an expiration of less than twelve hours, what does Jesus count as all most important?

'And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and give it to them...' (Luke 22:19). [...]

I thumb, run my finger across the pages of the heavy and thick books bound.  I read it slowly.  In the original language, 'he gave thanks' reads 'eucharisteo.'

I underline it on the page.  Can it lay a sure foundation under a life?  Offer the fullest life?

The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning 'grace.'  Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks.  He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks.

But there is more, and I read it.  Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis.  But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning 'joy.'  Joy.  Ah...yes.  I might be needing me some of that.  That might be what the quest for more is all about - that which Augustine claimed, 'Without exception...all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy.' [...]

That's what I was struggling out of nightmares to reach, to seize.  Joy.  But where can I seize this holy grail of joy?  I look back down to the page.  Was this the clue to the quest of all most important?  Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo - the table of thanksgiving.  I sit there long...wondering...is it that simple?

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

So then as long as thanks is possible...I think this through.  As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.  Joy is always possible.  Whenever, meaning - now; wherever, meaning - here.  The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional mountain peak experience.  The joy wonder could be here!  Here, in the messy, piercing ache of now, joy might be - unbelievably - possible!  The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now.

I whisper it out loud, let the tongue feel these sounds, the ear hear their truth.

Charis.  Grace.
Eucharisteo.  Thanksgiving.
Chara.  Joy.

A triplet of stars, a constellation in the black.  A threefold cord that might hold a life?  Offer a way up into the fullest life?

Grace, thanksgiving, joy.  Eucharisteo.

A Greek word...that might make meaning of everything?"
(p. 31-33)