My Word for This Year-Eucharisteo

My college friends and I began choosing words to live by and challenge us throughout the year once our paths started diverging after w
e left the serpentine walls of UVA.

I have chosen words such as abide and dream small (I know that's more than a word) in the past.

I had lunch the other day with Married Kat. She asked me about my word for 2013. Talk about accountability? I asked her. I loved hearing her journey with her word. She had chosen the word thankful because she knew her year would be filled with surgeries for their precious Annabelle.

I felt really small after hearing her story. And, very thankful.And, very empowered by our God. Annabelle truly is a miracle child.

My word for this year is going to be...drumroll...

eucharisteo...say what?  Eucharisteo means to give thanks.

It's a word that I stumbled on a few years ago in an Ann Voskamp book.

Here's an excerpt about it from an interview with Voskamp.

You use a term in the book: eucharisteo. Can you explain what that means?

Yes, it’s all Greek to me, but this is the word that can change everything: eucharisteo—it comes right out of the Gospel of Luke: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them … ” (Luke 22:19 NIV). In the original language, “he gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo.”

The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning “grace.” Jesus took the bread and saw it as graceand gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning “joy.” Charis. Grace. Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving. Chara. Joy.

Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo; the table of thanksgiving. The holy grail of joy, God set it in the very center of Christianity. The Eucharist is the central symbol of Christianity. Glynn, doesn’t the continual repetition of beginning our week at the table of the Eucharist clearly place the whole of our lives into the context of thanksgiving?

One of Christ’s very last directives He offers to His disciples is to take the bread, the wine, and to remember. Do this in remembrance of Me. Remember and give thanks.

This is the crux of Christianity: to remember and give thanks, eucharisteo.

Why? Why is remembering and giving thanks the core of the Christ-faith? Because remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust; to really believe. Re-membering, giving thanks, is what makes us a member again of the body of Christ. Re-membering, giving thanks is what puts us back together again in this hurried, broken, fragmented world.

Moral of the Story: How will I do this? What will it look like?

I don't have answer year, but I know it's a word that I hope to become a practice, norm, and area of growth in my life.