Delight Is The Heartbeat Beneath Us

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

C.S. Lewis

Delight, or disgust? What is God’s view when he looks at you?

Like some cartoon buffoon, does God’s face betray clueless, contemptuous disdain?

Or, do you picture a warm smile of welcome, a concerned gaze, a voice humming a tune you thought only your heart knew?

What is it like to be God?

The ancient world was inhabited by gods every bit as capricious, vindictive, and incompetent as the humans who invented them. By stunning contrast, the biblical writers pronounced that God is not at all like us. We need a slew of superlatives to describe someone

smarter and kinder
gentler and stronger
better and braver,
more trustworthy, just, powerful, fun, and, of all things, happier than anyone you could dream up.

Researching “Delight”

I was surprised. The task seemed simple–to read everything the Bible has to say about our fourth verb in the Alphabet of Life series. Days later, I had hardly made a dent. So far, I have discovered at least ten Hebrew and four Greek verbs that can be translated, delight, and those numbers don’t include related nouns and adjectives.

Undeniably, the Bible trips over itself with delight.

For, in its pages, the heavens applaud, the earth rejoices, the seas roar, the fields exult. Wild animals, cattle, creeping things and flying birds–not to mention, the trees of the forest, the hills, mountains, desert, and coastlands–all sing for joy before the Creator. All the time.

Can you hear them?

G.K. Chesterton, in his well-known book, Orthodoxy, suggests that, beneath all creation beats the steady heartbeat of divine mirth, that “joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.” Human beings, stuck in blind discouragement with our untrustworthy idols, “sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.”

The Most Joyous of All

Proverbs 8:31 depicts God “rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

How can this be true? Is God indifferent, or myopic? In the presence of planet-wide terror, is joy even an appropriate response?

To begin with, God takes suffering and evil far more seriously than we do. No one has nailed his heart down more cruelly on our behalf.

But remember–the wonders we glimpse for a moment, and soon forget, God sees anew all the time. Untethered to time, God is eternally present to an unceasing kaleidoscope of kindness, beauty and delight .

God sees before him the paths of hurt, humbling, and healing you have walked. He has been with you, and gone before you, all the way.

And he’s with you now.

Sing in the shadow

The Psalms invite us to “sing for joy in the shadow” of God’s wings. For, God loves when we come running for help, and then share his love with each other.

A few days ago, on Easter Sunday in the empty Duomo of Milan, beloved tenor Andrea Bocelli sang his joy as a prayer of hope and healing for the world. More than 35 million people have listened so far to his musical “hug for the whole world,” a short concert which ended with this less-known verse of, Amazing Grace:

“Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.”

Although Bocelli is blind, he sees what many sighted people miss–the expression on God’s face when he looks at this hurting world. Sorrow, concern, compassion, and righteous anger, yes. But more! God knows how it will end, he sees what he will do, what he is doing now for love of all he has made. And he invites us, especially in fear and sorrow, to tune our hearts to a creation-wide song of delight.

Thanks for joining us here! You can subscribe to this series by scrolling to the very bottom of this page. Next time in our series, Alphabet of Life: Eat