Ann Voskamp: Leave noticeable marks

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8

“Real love dares you to the really dangerous: Die in the diminutive. Be broken and given in the small, the moments so small no one may applaud at all. Pour out your life in laundry rooms and over toilets and tubs, and pour out life on the back streets, in the back of the room, back behind the big lights. Pour out your life in small moments, because it’s only these moments that add up to the monumental. The only way to live a truly remarkable life is not to get everyone to notice you, but to leave noticeable marks of His love everywhere you go.”

Ann Voskamp in The Way of Abundance: A 60-Day Journey into a Deeply Meaningful Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018) 107-108.

To “leave noticeable marks” of God’s love requires us to be filled with God’s love so that we can generously dispense it wherever we go. I am convinced we cannot will ourselves to “die in the diminutive” but we can do it when we know deeply and intimately the One who is love. These moments will look different for each of us but all of them will have the same defining feature: love. Leave noticeable marks today, tomorrow, and every day after that!