Delightful

I love words. Certain words have such depth of meaning. I admire authors and speakers who with just a few well-chosen words can convey their message in a deeply powerful way. It's an art....existing only in my dreams right now. Meanwhile, I am happy admiring other people's good use of words. I am especially in awe of the words God has chosen to speak to us! As I read the Bible, sometimes my mind floats away captured by just a single word...like "delight".

"Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:3-4 (NIV)

These are the famous verses we had printed on our wedding invitations. I love that word: delight. But usually when I read these verses, my mind gets stuck on "the desires of your heart". Lately I've been noticing how often I focus on what I should do to get what I need or want. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But even when what I desire may be something good and spiritual, I am discovering that the richness in the meaning of "delight" is becoming much more desireable to me than the very desires of my heart. This entire chapter is saturated with verbs like: trust, do good, dwell, enjoy, commit, be still, wait. (In fact, "trust", "do good", "dwell" and "wait" are repeated several times.) I believe that all those verbs are part of the meaning of "delighting".

But hold on a second. Let me quickly list the verbs that come to mind when I think of a normal day in my life: worry, hurry, stress, plan, prepare, accomplish, try, cry, sigh, pray, and fall into bed exhausted. :) Of course I am exaggerating a little, but only a little. Seriously, enjoy? Be still? When was the last time you did those? And wait?! We usually try to avoid that one at all costs. And what does dwell even mean?

Well, apparently something in us is always driving us forward, always trying to get ahead. But it seems that God is wanting us to stop and just enjoy the moment. How hard is that? "No, but what about..." says my head. Yet my heart desires this more than anything: to delight in the love of the Lord and the precious moments He gives me everyday. Basically, stop and smell the flowers and quit worrying. Why do we fight so hard against that? Silly people we are.

But that's not all.

"If the Lord delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand." Ps. 37:23-24

This is what really captivates me: the Lord also delights in us! For me, that changes things quite a bit because it's not just about stopping to smell some flower; it's about the Lord sitting there enjoying and delighting in me but I'm too busy to stop for him. That's as if my husband took an evening out of his busy schedule to plan a special date just for us and I told him I'm too busy planning and worrying about the future, I don't have time to relax and delight. You can forget about silly; that's just plain dumb!

As you can see my mind does wander off with just one word, and the art of few well-chosen words is not yet seen on my horizon. But within the lifestyle of being aware of His presence (that I wrote about in the last post) is the act of delighting. I don't know about you, but a lifestyle of delighting in God's presence and in His love way surpasses my desire for more things or more money or knowing what the next step is. My heart knows there is more peace and joy in that.

So in what ways can we put "delighting" into practice on a daily basis?