Delighting in God

Just this week I received a request in my school mailbox from some folks working with our middle school students youth ministry called "Chrysalis" They were looing for submissions to the questions "What does it mean to delight yourself, (or in this case myself), in the Lord?" So here's what came to me on another walk to work:

The first thing it means to me is that I have to expect delight, I have to be ready to recognize it when delight comes my way and that starts with reflections on all that God is, and that starts with worship. Not necessarily praise songs, reflective and heartfelt prayers – these are good things – but, as my pastor back home put it in a recent online sermon (and I quote as best I can recall) worship involves “responding with all that we are to all that He is”. Diving deeply into the character and track record of God and giving over those parts of me I’d hold onto if God wasn’t so good – that’s the start of delight.

One thing I delight in God is His unlikeliness. It’s unlikely that the God of the universe, the God of six and a half billion people (that’s just right now) would love and care for me BUT HE DOES – delightful! It’s unlikely that in this messy fractured world God has a grand scheme for all and a particular and meaningful role for a messy and fractured me BUT HE DOES – delightful! It’s unlikely that God would become man to clean up man’s problems for the glory of Himself BUT HE DID – delightful! It’s unlikely that God would choose me to become a brother (and friend, and servant, and disciple, and delight) of Christ BUT HE DID – delightful! So, delight in God’s unlikeliness, in His total uniqueness and otherness, in I guess what we can view as the delightful aspect of His holiness. And then keep on looking for unlikelinesses great and small – today, walking to work, I passed a rose in full bloom, a rose whose buds were, last week, to the day, encased in the season’s first snowfall. Beauty past the point where it should exist – unlikely, indicative of what God does in our lives, delightful!