spiritual direction

Recently, I completed a two-year course of study to become trained in a centuries-old practice known as spiritual direction. In case you’ve never heard of this before, I define spiritual direction as an intentional process whereby one person helps another notice, honor, and respond freely to God’s presence and activity in their life. As a spiritual director, I seek to cooperate with God in nurturing an open space where others can come to God just as they are...to experience what it means to be the Beloved of God.

I love the simplicity and the process of spiritual direction because I see a lot of playfulness in it. Did you know I happen to be passionate about play?!

Though the phrase “spiritual direction” might not sound very playful, time and time again, I have seen the spirit of play embodied in our midst as the person seeking God’s direction experiences freedom, grace, joy, and openness in their relationship with God. In spiritual direction, we engage our imagination and become more childlike (trusting) in our faith.

Like play, spiritual direction is not a pre-planned program. Each session has an improvisational feel to it as we simply listen to what is being said and as we open ourselves to what God might want to say in the spirit of love, just love. We bring the stuff of our real life to the interaction and attune our hearts to the very heart of God, bringing Scripture to bear and applying the gentle, compassionate, and gracious way of Jesus to our lives.

In the midst of such an interaction, we cultivate the spirit of self-forgetfulness (which is also a characteristic of play) as we attend fully to God’s presence in our midst right here...right now.

I’ve become convinced that these kinds of interactions are sorely needed in a world that scarcely slows down long enough to really listen. It saddens me that in our society today we have become increasingly violent towards one another in thought, word, and deed. In that light, spiritual direction is a countercultural way of being with one another, so I am looking forward to practicing it more and more with those who may be interested in it.

I wonder if you sense that spiritual direction could be a help to you in your life? If so, I’ve prepared a sign-up form where you can find out more details about it. If you have any questions or want to talk with me more about it, feel free to reach out via a private message.

In any case: may God’s love and joy, grace and freedom flourish in your life!

Playfulness and Extremism

 

In my book on cultivating a more playful life (and society), I try to describe the essence of playfulness in such a way that we capture a bigger vision as to its nature and value. Based on my in-depth study of the play-concept for over a decade now, I observe that as our society sinks deeper and deeper into division, much of it is due to our inability to think more playfully and relate to one another in more playful ways.

The late rabbi and psychologist Edwin Friedman describes what I am talking about in his groundbreaking book /Generation to Generation/, which I quote in my own book on play. He contrasts the essence of ‘seriousness’ with the essence of ‘playfulness’ as he writes:

“Seriousness is more than an attitude; it is a total orientation, a way of thinking embedded in constant, chronic anxiety. It is characterized by lack of flexibility in response, a narrow repertoire of approaches, persistent efforts to try harder, an inability to change direction, and a loss of perspective and concentrated focus…The antidote to seriousness is the capacity to be playful, which is not to be equated with making jokes…This notion of playfulness has less to do with ‘one-liners’ than with the concept of flexible distance; it has less to do with good ‘come-backs’ than with the ability to distinguish process from content.”*

I can’t help but feel that radicalization is fed by an ideological form of ‘seriousness’ (as Friedman describes) that is taken to an extreme. What makes extremism so dangerous is its intractability. You can’t reason with an extremist because they are unwilling to change their thinking. They lock out all other alternatives and are willing to die (and kill others and tear down society) to stand up for their beliefs. The language of “revolution” and “civil war” that some are touting right now is so dangerous, precisely for this reason.

My concern is that extremism can be easily embedded in both ends of the political spectrum, left and right. As more and more people gravitate to the extreme edges of their own political philosophy, we become crippled in our ability as a society to address the burning issues of our time in a cooperative fashion. Life becomes a game of winners and losers where everyone is doing their utmost to gain the upper hand for their side of the divide. To disrupt this destructive cycle, we must do all in our power personally to reject extremism in all its forms. In other words, we must be willing to change our mind.

This is the very thing that is so hard for us to do, however. It feels like we are losing face, especially when some of us have invested so much time and energy defending our particular spot on the political spectrum (whether left or right). Changing will feel like losing one’s very identity, one’s own sense of integrity. The paradox is: those who are willing to change are more integrated than those who are not. Though the willingness to change does not always mean it is wise to change, the willingness itself is what makes the convicted person an even stronger person—and, when they do see a need to change, it has the added benefit of helping them improve themselves, as well as the society in which we live.   

Though government can help us resist extremism, it is really a personal matter for each individual and it requires all of us to do what we can to nurture our own mental, emotional, and spiritual health so we do not become locked into these extreme ways of being. What that means is we have to get hold of our anger and learn to direct it in constructive ways. We must do all in our power to avoid being unnecessarily inflammatory.

Political memes often contribute to this kind of inflammatory extremism, by the way. They tend to paint others who are different than we are in a kind of caricature which the lies of extremism feed upon. Ironically, political memes have a guise of playfulness to them, but most of them are embedded in the kind of anti-play spirit that Friedman describes. One author (Jerome Berryman) uses the word “pseudo-play” to describe it. Destructive political memes are doubly ruinous in that they positively energize the extremists on one side of the political divide while also negatively energizing the extremists on the other side. Far from generating understanding, they obscure it.

Friends, in this time of crisis, I vow to do all in my power to resist extremism in my own thinking and life as well as in society-at-large. And I sure would love it if others would join me in this by practicing being more playful in the way we engage others. May grace and peace flourish! Lord, have mercy on us.

……………….

Playfulness and Extremism

reflections by Rev. Troy B. Cady

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*The quote above is from Edwin Friedman, /Generation to Generation/ (New York: Guilford Press, 1985), 50-51 as quoted in /PlayFull: Play as a Pathway to Personal & Relational Vitality/ by Troy Cady (Chicago: PlayFull, 2019), 7.

 

Pentecost: God Dances Like a Flame Within

Today, I remember the significance of the promise Jesus made to his disciples shortly after his resurrection. It was a promise that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, the Church is sent to serve as Jesus served, to be a sign of hope, to reflect here and now the joy and love of the kingdom of God that shall never fade. In Acts 2, we read a record of how this new work in and through the Church was inaugurated during the Feast of Pentecost--and that good work is still continuing today. In this short video, I share the story of Acts 1 and 2 by using materials I've created to help both young and old receive the kingdom of God like little children. I hope you enjoy it.

You can also click this link to view the video onYouTube.

If you are interested in obtaining these materials for use in your church or home setting, email me at troy@playfull.org for more details.

Play is so much more than just a form of superficial escapism. It expresses something fundamental about what it means to be human and it shapes us, both individually and as a society. To learn more about the enduring value of playfulness, visit playfull.org—the site of a ministry I lead called PlayFull. I also invite you to like PlayFull on Facebook and follow us there. Thank you!

Delighting in God

Delighting in God

by Troy Cady

Moments of joy are the bookmarks of the soul. Like folds on the corners of the pages of your life, moments of joy are wrinkles that point you to something good. Turn to a joyful page mentally and you could swear you were there again physically. Despite some hard things I’ve experienced over the years, I am grateful that if you were to pick up the unfinished story of my life, you would see many, many page corners turned over—reminders that life has truly been filled with joys too many to count, unforgettable moments of delight, grace and wonder.

I think of childhood winters in Minnesota, playing hockey on an outdoor rink with friends from the neighborhood. In my memory, I can smell the wood burning in the stove-fire from the warming house, I can feel the heat and hear the laughter after my oldest brother told one of his many jokes.

I wonder: as you reflect on your own story…what pages are earmarked—what special moments of pure joy would we encounter there? I invite you now to enjoy a bit of silence as you turn in your mind’s eye to one of these pages.

I am convinced we can never have enough of such goodness. So, in this essay I invite us to look more deeply at the theme of delight. In another essay, I considered an aspect of delight that we don’t often think about: it’s the reality that God delights. Zephaniah 3:17 says that God delights in us and sings over us. Quite simply, I put it this way: God is not a killjoy; he loves us so much he actually likes us, enjoys us.

I write this in hopes that we will get caught up in God’s goodness to the point where we can reflect God’s delight and wonder in our own lives. To that end, in this teaching I want to explore 1) why delight matters, 2) what it is and 3) a few ways we are invited to live in delight.  

Why delight matters

First, why does this topic matter? To be honest, talking about living a delightful life seems like a luxury to us. I mean…who has time to talk about enjoying life when there’s so much work to be done, wrongs to be righted, and improvements to be made? Ultimately, this is why this topic matters. As a society, we are constantly driven to accomplish more and we feel guilt or shame if we don’t.  Sadly, this is an indicator to me that we tend to take ourselves too seriously.

To be sure, this mindset of crippling seriousness easily infects us. We live in a world where bad news dominates the daily media cycle and Facebook turns others into faceless abstractions such that we would do better to call it Hatebook. It’s easy to take ourselves too seriously when we are overwhelmed by negativity, fear and anger. This causes us to suffer from what author Christine Aroney-Sine describes as “play deprivation, nature deficit disorder, awe depletion, compassion fatigue, imagination suppression, and more.”[1] And, if it is true that God is, in his very essence, filled with delight, joy, and creativity, then it is also true that, as Aroney-Sine asserts, “…we suffer from God deprivation too.”[2]

Our need for delight is not a new concept. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas asserted that delight matters because it is essential for happiness—and happiness, he says, is “the last end [or goal] of human life.”[3]

In commenting on this, Peter Kreeft, a philosopher at Boston College, says that happiness is the ultimate goal in life “because all seek it as an end [in itself], not as a means to any further end...No one seeks happiness,” he says, “in order to be rich, or powerful, or wise, but people seek riches, or power, or wisdom because they think these will make them happy...”[4]

That’s why Aquinas devotes four large sections of his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, to the matter of happiness. In one article, he provides four reasons as to why he thinks delight is essential for happiness.[5] 1) Delight, he says, is “a preamble and preparation” for happiness. Just as one needs instruction if one is to understand science, so delight is a teacher who prepares us for the eternal art of happiness. 2) Delight, he says, perfects happiness. It is like the soul of the body. If happiness is the objective state of total well-being, delight is the subjective experience of it. Delight perfects happiness because, through delight, we know first-hand that we are happy. 3) Delight, he says, is a helper to happiness, like a friend helping another friend achieve what could not be done alone. When we feel lost and lonely, delight is a wise companion showing us the way to happiness. And, 4) Aquinas observes that delight is essential for happiness because it is “attendant” to happiness, like heat is attendant to fire.

The nature of delight

Aquinas’ fourth observation does more than tell us why delight is important; it also tells us about the nature of delight. The mystery of being human is that no person you ever meet is only a mind, or emotion or a body. To be fully human (and gladly so) is to integrate mind, emotion and body—just as it is in the nature of a flame to always integrate heat, light and the substance (or body) of fire. To blaze with life, humans integrate (as Peter Kreeft puts it) “the light of the fire of life” and “the heat of the fire of life”[6]—while the fire itself is given tangible expression through our bodies.

Delight integrates these life-fire qualities of light, heat and substance. We experience it often as warmed affections or quickened emotions, but we also experience it when our intellect has been enlightened and we learn something new. What’s more, our mind and heart converge in delight such that we can actually sense it physically in our bodies—and sometimes this works the other way around, too. Our body has the capacity to tell us when our mind relishes an exciting new discovery or when our feelings are telling us we are falling in love. The taste of sweet fruit, or the sound of ocean waves or the tenderness and passion of sex all testify to the way delight unifies body, mind and heart. Just as it is impossible to pick apart the light, heat and substance of a flame, so it is impossible to separate what makes us wonderfully and mysteriously human. 

Because of this, I find it helpful to think of delight as the soul of life itself. And the expression “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (Ps. 103:1) illustrates this vividly. We often relate this expression to “the spiritual life,” imagining the words “bless” and “soul” as invisible realities. But the expression “bless the Lord, O my soul” points us to the body from first to last because the word “bless” here is the Hebrew word “baruch” or “barak”, meaning “to kneel.” And the word “soul” is “nephesh”—which means “neck.”[7] Significantly, the neck is the crossroads where blood, oxygen and the electrical signals of the nervous system pass through to integrate the mind, heart, lungs, and extremities in one glorious living, breathing, pulsing, walking, and reaching wonder.

Thus, “Bless the Lord, O my soul” could be rendered expansively as: “Bend the knee to the Lord, O my everything. Neck, do your work. Let my mind be rapt in wonder, let my heart (my emotion) be amazed and enjoy how good God is…and let my body show it: let me laugh and sing, shout, cry, run, rest and rise. Let worship sink deep into my bones; drive me to my knees because God is awesome and wonderful and beyond understanding. Make me a put-together person.”

The expression denotes wholeness, which the Bible describes as “shalom”—total well-being. It’s a vision of human flourishing and, indeed, the flourishing of all living things. In Psalm 72, we get a vivid picture of this “blessed” life of shalom. The Psalm was written by King Solomon during a time of peace and prosperity. Food was never lacking and the nation’s intellectual endeavors gained international recognition. It was a golden age. Though this psalm serves as a picture of Israel during the time of Solomon, it can also be taken as a description of what happens when people and the world are whole (or put-together) by delighting in God.

The Psalm says a world of shalom is a world where justice is done, the oppressed are defended, and children are fed. It says we are rescued from violence and the land is fruitful. As the psalmist finishes painting this picture for us, he observes in verse seventeen: “Then all nations will be blessed through him [the king], and they will call him blessed.”

Our picture of the happy life is enriched here because the word blessed appears in two different forms: “barak” and “asher.” Both can be translated as “blessed” but the former means “to kneel” while the latter connotes “gladness and happiness,” or “to make glad” or “to be happy.”

The first instance this word appears in the Bible is when Jacob’s wife Leah has a child and names him Asher. Upon his birth, she exclaims how happy she is and that others will call her happy, too, so she is going to call the child “Happy” or “Asher.” In Leah’s story, happiness is both an objective state of being and a subjective experience, both a noun and a verb.

That is the picture we get in Psalm 72 and it’s actually an image of a king kneeling to serve, such that the nations are blessed and the king is “happy” because the nations are blessed.

Princeton scholar Ellen Charry refers to this all-encompassing vision of shalom as asherism. It sounds like a strange concept, but Charry sums it up simply: “God enjoys our happiness and we enjoy God’s happiness.”[8] Asherism holds forth the hope that one day we will experience happiness not as a momentary experience but as a permanent, lasting reality—as it is in God’s very self. It affirms that God made all things out of God’s own deep gladness and joy—and God made humans in God’s image to reflect and experience that same gladness and joy. God wants all that is in God’s being and all that proceeds from God’s being to return to God, to flow in and out continuously in eternal gladness, like an endless ocean of deep, enduring happiness.

Ways to practice delight

In her book God and the Art of Happiness Ellen Charry includes several practical outcomes of asherism and I will mention two before considering other ways to practice delight as a means to happiness.

First, Charry asserts that to grow “in the art of happiness” it’s good to steward our talents and strengths well.[9] God, in utter gladness, has made each of us unique and it delights God when we notice, appreciate and live in step with the special abilities he has given us. Charry encourages us to be “unashamed” of our gifts, so if someone shares with you how you have blessed them, you can just say thank you to them and to God for making you the way he did. Just delight!

A second way Charry encourages us to practice delight is to enjoy creation by stewarding it well.[10] For those who are especially dedicated to creation care, it is good to remember to just enjoy creation along the way and to let yourself be amazed by nature’s ability to heal itself. In our work to save the planet we can sometimes feel overwhelmed. In those instances, you might like to try imagining God right by our side, smiling, sweaty and singing as he tends the fields and forests, rivers and lakes. He notices the butterflies and bees before we do, so it’s good to let God’s own sustenance of creation delight us deeply.

In any case, whether we are stewarding our gifts or stewarding creation, both types of stewardship are rooted in a key aspect of delight—which is noticing what God notices by bringing all your senses, your full self, to your waking hours. I think of the delight of cooking and relishing the taste of food that has been lovingly prepared. Just the act of slowing down to savor a meal can do wonders to strengthen your posture towards delight. I think of the wonder of music, the sounds of the wind, crickets and birds; we have endless opportunities to delight in God with our ears. I think of the many delights we can enjoy as we slow down to notice the scent of a recent rainfall or a plot of flowers, the smell of a puppy or fresh-ground coffee. Our eyes can delight as we slowly take in a painting of thick oil textures, a black-and-white photograph, or the veins and colors of a maple leaf. Gazing at the clouds, looking at the waves, or taking in the sunset can fill us with awe and wonder. Feeling the sand beneath your feet, gently touching a baby’s cheek, or just enjoying the feeling of water flowing freely through your hands can be great ways to delight in God. There is no contradiction between a godly life and a sensual life.

A key aspect of delight simply involves slowing down enough to be fully present. The older I get the more I am convinced this is the hardest thing for us to do. In a culture that values the self-made individual, there is little that makes us feel stranger than the experience of doing nothing. As soon as we have nothing to do, we fill it with something else to do.

In his book Theology of Play, Jürgen Moltmann observes how severely our desire for productivity impinges on our quest for happiness. He notes that, for most people, even vacation has become a phenomenon that must be put to useful ends.[11] Sadly, we often place unhelpful expectations on our rest, measuring it by how effective or fun or productive it was. Somehow, vacation itself even becomes work. Is it any wonder that, irony of ironies, the leisure sector is considered an industry? When rest becomes a market, something is seriously wrong. 

The Bible commends to us the practice of Sabbath to help us detox from our addiction to doing and productivity. In Hebrew it is the word “shabbat” and it literally means “stop, rest.”[12] The first instance of the word in Scripture is used in reference to God. It comes right after Genesis 1 where we have a picture of God creating the entire world out of sheer delight. Along the way, the story tells us that God noticed what he had made and blessed it. But then day 7 arrives and the text surprises us. Instead of continuing to make more wonderful things, God stops (“sabbaths”) and rests, truly rests. He just does nothing and he just enjoys being with what he has made.

Lest we think this anticlimactic, the writer gives us a clue as to why this “work of rest” is the pinnacle of all God’s works. The writer says that God not only “blessed” the seventh day, but it says he “got married to it.” Most translations render the Hebrew as “called it holy” but the Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel points out that the phrase “sanctified it” or “called it holy” connotes images of “betrothal” and “marriage.”[13] In other words, God loved this seventh day of rest so much that he said, “I want to marry you; I will cleave to your side forever and love you passionately.”

This is why the rabbinic community has historically referred to the seventh day as Queen Sabbath, because on the seventh day God, the King, took to himself a Queen—the nobility, the dignity, delight and wonder…of rest.

A teacher I had recently told a story about an experience he had with his grandson that illustrates how wonderful pure, simple rest can be. He was visiting his family in Central America and they were at a small, local grocery store. His grandson, who was about three, said: “Grandpa! Come here!” The boy led his grandpa to the back of the store where there was a pastry counter. He wanted the largest chocolate donut you have ever seen, so…Grandpa bought it. By the time they left the store, the boy’s face and shirt front were covered in chocolate frosting but he still had a lot of donut to eat. As they walked towards home, the boy kept eating his donut but they had to be careful because the sidewalk was very narrow and there were cars whizzing by on a narrow street to their left with a high wall towering up on their right. At a certain point, the wall lowered, so the boy could sit down on it just to keep enjoying his donut. Grandpa noticed the boy had stopped, so he turned back to catch him up. And as he approached his grandson, the little boy just gave his Grandpa a look—and motioned (without a word) for him to sit down. And there they sat silently, just doing nothing, just enjoying being with each other, delighting in the moment. As the boy’s grandpa told that story to us, he explained: “That’s why I think of God as a three-year-old boy.”

Conclusion

I think the grandfather in that story is onto something: God really could be a child, inviting us to be a child, too. I love how Ann Lamott puts it in her book Bird by Bird: “Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points and you look and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny tiny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world—present and in awe.”

Is it any wonder Jesus said that we must “change and become like little children” if we are to live in God’s kingdom? (Mt. 18:3) To delight in God is just to play like God plays, to enjoy God and the world God has made, to rest, to stop long enough to notice, to take ourselves lightly, to just be fully present to others, to honor moments of silent wonder, to get your body into it…kneeling, savoring, listening, embracing, and singing. Play puts us together, within and without. In play and delight we lay down our compulsion to control and consume; we lay down our own agenda…and just rest. Since we cannot achieve the end of happiness without delight, let us practice it with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

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[1] from The Gift of Wonder (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2019), 4.

[2] Ibid., 4.

[3] Thomas Aquinas. Summa of the Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 349.

[4] Peter Kreeft. Summa of the Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 350.

[5] Thomas Aquinas. Summa of the Summa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 382.

[6] Peter Kreeft. Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 125.

[7] Eugene Peterson. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 36.

[8] Ellen Charry. God and the Art of Happiness (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 275.

[9] Ibid., 275-276.

[10] Ibid., 276.

[11] Jürgen Moltmann. Theology of Play, trans. Reinhard Ulrich (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 8-9.

[12] Eugene Peterson. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 109.

[13] Quoting a rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes “…sanctification is the Hebrew word for marriage.” And: “The Hebrew word le-kadesh, to sanctify, means…to consecrate a woman, to betroth.” See Heschel. The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 55, 51-52.

a God who delights

Here's a talk I gave recently at Grace Covenant Church in Chicago. I hope it blesses you. You can read part 2 of this series on delighting in God here.  -Troy

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A God Who Delights

by Troy Cady

I invite you to think of someone you like a lot, the kind of person that lifts your spirit whenever you are around them. Try to think of just what it is you like about them and describe the qualities you admire with specific words or phrases. Maybe you’d like to take a moment to give thanks for the gift of that person in your life.

Now consider this: the way you think about that person is the way God thinks about you. God delights in you. In fact, God is full of delight for the whole world. That, quite simply, is all I want to look at in this essay.

God is not a killjoy

I don’t know about you but for the better part of my life I didn’t think of God as someone who is full of delight. At various times I have thought of God as a standard of perfection to which I could never measure up, a God who could only be pleased with me if I performed well for him and others. I’ve gone through seasons where it seemed I could never stop committing a certain sin and at different points I was sure I had reached the limit where God would say, “Okay, that’s it. I’m done with you. You’re hopeless.” I imagined that if I ever saw God face to face, he would want to know why it is that I can come up with lots of good ideas but never complete any of them. This God is the God of regret, a God defined by all my lost chances and failed tests. This is the killjoy God.

But this is not the kind of God the Bible describes. The God of the Bible is a God whose mercies are new every morning. This God never says, “I’m done with you.” This God says, “You’re mine and I love you so much. I made you: I will never stop loving you.” This God believes in you and sees good things in you, because this God is the one who put those good things in you. This God loves you so much that he actually likes you.

That might sound like a strange thing to say because we tend to think that loving someone is greater than liking them, but when we apply that notion to God we end up with the twisted thought that perhaps God has found a way to love us without actually liking us. We might quote the verse “God is love” but somewhere inside us there is a disconnect between the love of God and the delight of God. Yes, God loves us—but is it possible, could it be…that God delights in us so much he actually likes us?

The prospect of this is so wonderful that I encourage you to spend an entire month letting that simple truth sink into your heart, mind and body. Because God loves, God delights.

This truth is brought out beautifully by a key verse I encourage you to meditate on over and over again. It’s from Zephaniah 3:17 where it says,

“The Lord your God is with you,

the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Just soak that in now. If there was ever a doubt that God delights in you, this verse lays that doubt to rest: “he will take great delight in you.”

In my study of that text, I looked at the word delight and discovered that there are several words in Hebrew that can be translated as delight. It’s as if God’s delight is like a diamond with many faces. Turning the diamond to see a different side brings out different colors, each one fascinating to behold.

In this verse, a certain variety of delight holds center stage. Notice that the verse is formed by five lines. Lines one and two provide a set-up for lines three through five and the latter three lines form their own triplet. In this case, some Hebrew scholars render the last three lines like so:

“he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will quiet you with his love,

he will rejoice over you with singing.”

The phrase “he will take great delight in you” conveys the image of God “rejoicing over you with gladness.” I love that: God is joyful…filled with gladness.

The set-up to this establishes a situation of close, personal safety. It describes God as a Mighty One, someone who is strong enough to save you from trouble. This “mighty one” is named and located in the first phrase where it says: “Yahweh, your God, is in your midst.”

Yahweh is God’s name, not God’s title. The writer here is calling God by name and reminding us that Yahweh is very close to us (in our midst) keeping us safe. Within this place of intimate, personal safety, God freely rejoices over you with gladness (line 3) and with singing (line 5). Thus, line 4 makes it clear: when we experience that kind of love, that kind of delight, it quiets the uproar in our hearts.

How we need that kind of love today! This verse tells us quite simply that God is not a killjoy. He is up-close and personal. He is safe. He sings gladly over you. He quiets you, loves you, delights in you.

God is not an It

This verse also suggests to us another myth we need to lay to rest about God and it is this: God is not an It. This poem speaks of God in personal terms. You’ll notice that in this particular verse, the poetry would fall flat were it to speak of God in terms of an It: “it will take great delight in you, it will quiet you with its love, it will rejoice over you with singing.”  That kind of textual rendering would sound kind of creepy, actually!

In this instance, the verbs happen to be in the third person masculine singular which indicates the “he” pronoun: “he will take great delight in you, he will quiet you, he will rejoice over you.”

The emphasis, however, is not on the “he” but on the personal nature of God. God is not an It, but nor is God solely a “he.” Other texts dealing with the delight of God also bring out the feminine personal aspect of God, speaking of God in terms of “she” or “her.”

Look at Proverbs 8 for a great example of this. In this text, God is very closely identified with Wisdom who is portrayed as a woman. In fact, Wisdom is so closely associated with God in this text that many interpreters feel it is like God talking about God's self in the voice of a woman. In my study for this topic, I looked closely at this text because it tells us in verses 30 and 31 that Wisdom is “filled with delight.” In wanting to learn what kind of delight the text is describing, I discovered other ways of translating how God talks about Herself here. And I love this translation, which says:

"I was an artisan with God.

I was filled with delight day after day,

playing, laughing always in God's presence,

playing, laughing, enjoying the whole world,

delighting in all humanity."

One popular translation of the Hebrew text renders “playing, laughing” as “rejoicing” but really the idea of delight here is one of playing and laughing. Additionally, the phrase “I was constantly at his side” could be translated literally as “I was an artisan.” This text encourages us to think of God as a laughing, playful painter or sculptor who happens to be a woman—which is very different than how we normally think of God.

Another delightful feminine image of God draws a parallel between God and the city of God’s people, Jerusalem—the “City of Peace.” In Isaiah 66:12-13, God and this city of peace are closely identified when God says,

“I will extend peace to her like a river,

and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;

you will nurse and be carried on her arm

and dandled on her knees.

As a mother comforts her child,

so will I comfort you;

 and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

Notice how the text surprises us here. In the first part, it sounds like God is describing Jerusalem as a mother but then in the last three lines the mother Jerusalem is equated with the motherhood of God.

Though this picture of a city of peace has a literal counterpart in the land of Israel, it also expresses a desire of God’s to see every city, including ours, to become a place of peace. Notice that, for that to happen, God plays the role of mother, nursing us, carrying us on her arm, playing with us like a mother playing with her toddler on her knees. It’s a picture of comfort, of being nourished by God’s delight, carried by her and enjoying her.

I just love the thought here that God delights in our city neighborhoods. When we think of the city we often think of all the problems that need to be fixed, but when God thinks of the city God doesn’t start with the problem, God starts with delight. And God’s delight is our very peace. And God’s delight is personal.

God is not Plato’s Unmoved Mover

Another myth we need to dispel about God is something we’ve inherited from a long tradition of European philosophy. It comes from Plato who described God as “the Unmoved Mover.” This God is distant and stoic, unmoved by our plight.

In Isaiah 38, we get another image of God’s delight in the story of Hezekiah who became so sick he was on the verge of death. He cried out to God and, when he recovered, Hezekiah wrote a song to thank God for answering his prayer. In verse 17 we get a beautiful picture of another side of God’s delight, where Hezekiah writes: “In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction…”

The imagery in Hebrew, however, is even more vivid than this. It is a picture of attachment where God actually gets into the pit with Hezekiah, who testifies: “You attached to me, and loved my soul out of the pit.” It’s a picture of a God who not only moves to restore life but who jumps right into the pit of hell to wrap his arms around us and love us back to life. In this text, God’s delight is God’s passionate, merciful attachment to us.

This image of a leaping, attaching, loving, delighting God makes up the very center of the core story I use in my work with children year after year. We start the story by saying that God dances so hard he leaps right out of himself back into himself. We say that God was so joyful, he leapt into our world in love. “And now,” we say, “God is inviting you to dance with him.”

Contrary to Plato’s Unmoved Mover, the God of the Bible is not static…the God of the Bible is ek-static, which means “out of oneself.” When you are in a state of ecstasy, you have the sensation that you are having an out-of-body experience. It’s transcendent.

The philosopher Peter Kreeft says that’s what joy is. It’s the state of leaping out of your own skin into another and back again. When we talk about “falling in love” this is the kind of thing we’re really talking about. It would probably be more accurate to say we’re drowning in joy. All at once you feel nothing like yourself and more like yourself than you ever have before.

I love how Kreeft describes this in the specific terms of Christian faith. He writes: “We leap to God because he leaped to us in Christ, and God leaped to us because he is eternally leaping within himself like a flea circus. The whole of reality is ek-static leaping, a cosmic dance, God engaging in a wild acrobatic display with humanity.”

This is a picture of the amazing love of God for each of us; it’s a love that’s immersed in an inexhaustible ocean of joy, whose depths we could never completely plumb. In Jesus, God leapt into who we are so we could leap into who he is. For us to fully grasp the significance of this kind of love, I think that instead of saying “God is love” we might do better to say, “God is always falling in love with us.”

God is beyond reason

If we think of God this way, it will help us put in place another common misconception we have about God, and it’s this: somehow we have got it into our head that God always has to make sense to us. We equate God to reason. And, though God is wise, wisdom is greater than reason. When we equate God to reason, we end up trying to put God in a box.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that the only way we will be able to make sense of God is if we stop trying to make sense of God all the time. If it is true that God is always falling in love with us and longing for us to return those affections, it follows that at various points in life we’ll be carried away by that love, even irrationally so.

God’s love and God’s ways may be reasonable but they are not merely reasonable. God’s love, God’s delight goes beyond reason. It’s because of God’s delight that we will always encounter God as a mystery.

In Isaiah 11 we have a vivid picture of God’s mystery where we read that “infants will play near the hole of the cobra.” That image of play is an image of delight, but for Pete’s sake…notice where the kid is playing! It’s like Isaiah was watching some movie where the hero is given LSD to induce a dream-like state and we see all kinds of weird things like wolves sharing a house with lambs, cows feeding with bears, lions eating straw and Indiana Jones as a toddler, laughing while sitting on a carpet of snakes. It makes no sense! It makes me want to say, “Okay, Izzy: just lay down while I go put on a pot of coffee for ya.”

Thankfully, looking back on the text now, we can make some sense of it, but even then its meaning still defies all logic and reason. Today we know that in the advent of Jesus we witnessed a child for whom Satan, the great serpent, was nothing more than a plaything. And this is so not because Jesus became so great but rather because God became so small, a child.  The delight of God confounds how seriously Satan takes himself and how seriously we take ourselves, too. God overcomes our desire for greatness by becoming a child who delights.

Conclusion

And therein lies the key if we are to comprehend even the slightest fragment of this God who delights: we must become as God became; we must become like a little child.

I love how G.K. Chesterton relates God to childhood. He writes:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” -from Orthodoxy

It's true: we encounter the Ancient of Days most fully when we encounter God as an eternal child, filled with wonder and joy, delight and irrational but truly free love. We cannot reason our way into the delight of God. The delight of God is a leap, it’s a foolhardy attachment, it’s a continual falling in love with those of us who haven’t the first clue how very, very, very much God loves us, how she sings over us, dances his life away, nurses us, carries us, rescues us, and asks us to come out and play. The invitation is to change and become like a child because God is an eternal child. The invitation is to simply enjoy a God who delights. Amen.

love, play and childhood

A life of significance is not found in what you accomplish, but in who you love. This is what children teach me. Never have I met a child who wants to have an account of my importance according to my resumé. Sadly, however, I have met some children who have been trained by accomplishment-driven adults to become accomplishment-driven themselves. I can see it in their eyes: the desire to please, to be regarded as special.

Nothing is more welcome to a child than to enjoy the presence of someone who wants to be with them not because of what they can do but just because of who they are. And the same is true for any person of any age. How liberating it is to be loved by someone who asks not “What have you done?” but rather asks in a pure, non-critical way, “How are you doing? Tell me honestly. I’m listening.”

This is really why I am passionate about play. Nothing communicates value quite like it for, in play, one is really saying: “I just want to be with you. I’m not here to get something out of you or to make you prove yourself to me. Let’s just enjoy being together.” Play makes space for love.

And this is how I think of God. Play makes space for God, because God makes space for love. And this is why I see God most clearly in children, and in people of any age who are well-practiced at living as a child-at-heart.

…………….

*Photo by Blake Barlow via Unsplash. Creative Commons license.

  

what is my worth?

What is my worth? We live in a culture that prizes worth and worthiness. Some stories:

Late last year and early this year, I passed through several tiers of a vetting process in applying for an executive level position for a Christian organization with more than 850 churches across North America. In January, my application process reached the stage where it was clear the selection committee was seriously considering me as a viable candidate for the post.

To be honest, I was shocked my resume even piqued their interest. My educational background was sub-par, I was relatively new to the organization (hardly anyone knows who I am in this organization) and my most recent role with them was about as low on the vocational ladder as you can get.

Nevertheless, in the interview several stages later, the key decision-maker actually said to me: “The fact that you have made it this far in the process means we can see you doing the job. Even if we don’t offer you the job, we will be calling on you so we can draw on your expertise.”

The experience was a source of both exhilaration and tension; so, to help myself remain centered, I reached out to a few trusted advisors to learn how I could present my best self to the selection committee. Significantly, each one said to me to just be myself. After all, if I try to be someone I’m not, it will end in frustration for me, for the team and for the organization as a whole.

I trusted their advice, so I decided I was going to make sure to be true to my deep-seated convictions about…the nature and value of playfulness. I have come to think of play as my “voice.”

…………………….

The paradox of play is that we don’t do it to “get something out of it” but rather we do it “just for the fun of it.” Play is wasteful.

But it is so, so valuable.

As a Christian minister, I am in the process of articulating a theology of play. I’m not the first one to try to do this, to be sure, so I’ve been reading other scholars on play and faith. One of the key components of a theology of play involves creation. The Bible opens with a portrait of a God who makes the world a good and beautiful place: light and color, sky and sea, land and plants, sun, moon and stars, animals and people.

One scholar (Jürgen Moltmann) delightfully engages this text by asking the question all children ask about it: “Why?” Why did God make all this?

And the child’s answer (which is the best answer, I do believe) is, quite simply: “Because God wanted to do it. That’s why.”

I feel this is the best answer because it reminds us that God’s happiness about creation is not dependent on what it can do for him or how he can put it to use…but rather just because it is good. In fact, many Christians often miss the fact that God does not call the creation good. He simply sees that it is good. He notices its intrinsic value, apart from its usefulness.

The implication: God loves people not by how they can be put to use but just because they are people. Everyone, no matter their level of skill or intelligence, is valuable just by…being. All life is precious.

…………………………

Recently, a friend of mine (whom I will call Derek) posted what I assume is something he learned at the Global Leadership Summit which is running today and tomorrow. The Summit is an annual conference that attracts almost half a million people in various locations around the world to learn how to be better leaders from many of the world’s top-notch leaders. To give you an idea: in the past, the Summit has hosted leaders like Bill Clinton, Melinda Gates and Patrick Lencioni.

My friend is attending this year’s Summit at a satellite location and here is what he posted: “Your core values are what make you valuable to others.”

His statement both resonated with me and repelled me. Here’s why:

His daughter (whom I will call Lisa) replied to his statement about our “value” with these words: “And also that you are my dad and you are awesome!”

In other words: “Dad, you’re not valuable because of your values—you’re valuable to me just because you’re my Dad.”

Spot on.

……………….

What is the true worth of a person? What is it, truly, that makes someone “valuable” to another?

My experience in applying for a job confirms what my friend originally posted. Organizations tend to value those individuals who have clear values…a clear sense of “self.” Employers want employees who are self-aware; they want employees who know what their strengths and weaknesses are and individuals who bring something distinctive to the group that truly adds value.

So, yes: “Your core values are what make you valuable to others.” Be true to yourself.

But there is a limit to this. If we only value people because of their (presumably, shared) “core values,” we need to do some soul-searching as to whether our values are really very valuable, after all.

……………………………

Last night I was in Indianapolis with a small faith community called Diakonos  (meaning, Servant). I admire the people of Diakonos because they are particularly skilled at befriending folks who are homeless (and those who are vulnerable to homelessness).  In fact, when Diakonos holds their weekly meeting, they do so in a particular place so they can be close to where some of their friends without homes live.

Before the scheduled part of the evening began, I had the privilege of visiting with a young man (whom I will call Tim). Tim lives in a house-group setting now and he is on the road to recovery.

Prior to this, he lived in one of the camps in Indianapolis where homeless people gather to set up a makeshift village. While there, he was using heroin and he suffered from alcoholism. Life in the camps can be okay, he told me, if you are living with the right kind of people who know how to get along. But sometimes people show up who just want power, so they make overtures to become “mayor” or “president” of the village. Often, violence erupts in the scramble to secure power.

Tim told me that sometimes he’d get so drunk he’d wake up in the morning with blood crusted on his face and not remember who (or why) he fought the previous night. Thankfully, he said he was doing better now that he was pursuing recovery.

I asked him, “What has helped you change?” And he told me that the moment he tried to kill himself was one of the big turning points.

He felt worthless, so he tried to hang himself. He said that as soon as he made the move to do it, he instantly thought: “I don’t want to die.” But it was too late. The rope was tightening around his neck as gravity was doing its inexorable work.  

He said he doesn’t know exactly what happened because he blacked out, but when he woke up he was on the ground and it appeared the tree branch had broken.

While he was lying there some people came by and took his wallet and some other personal items—until, finally, someone called for help and he was taken to recovery.

My friend Leon visited Tim while he was recovering and Tim credits Leon with his commitment to recovery today. Leon had known Tim at that point for at least a year because Leon visited Tim in the camp when he was still using heroin and getting drunk. Tim says he remembers Leon telling him, “You’re a smart guy. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

In Leon, Tim saw unconditional love—because, in Tim, Leon saw a value beyond mere “values.”

………………….

In my work with children I have become keenly aware that they just want to be loved, to be seen and heard and respected. Children learn surprisingly early the sting of rejection, what it feels like to not “measure up” to the expectations of others.

I have dedicated my life to Christian ministry because I am convinced there is inside all of us a yearning to be loved not because of anything we have said or done but simply because we all have intrinsic worth that can never be diminished.

In a world where we often have to “sell ourselves” to others, I experience the unconditional love of God as my saving grace—a great relief when I feel like I don’t measure up or can’t measure up.

While it is true that I do well to live by my values (to be true to how God has made me), I am thankful that my ultimate value is not dependent on my values.

Is there any greater gift we can give to someone than to value them just for who they are, just because they are?

……………….

Last night, with Diakonos in Indianapolis, I told a story that portrayed God by several metaphors: a Gardener, a seed, a Shepherd, the bread of life and the light of the world.

When given the opportunity to respond freely to this story, Tim chose to respond by drawing a picture. He picked the image of the Good Shepherd and I feel it is little wonder he did so.

Is there any better news to someone like Tim than to know he has a Good Shepherd—than to know someone like Jesus-in-Leon came searching for him in the wilderness? Is there any better news than to know God wants you to live just because you’re valuable—just because you’re loved?

There is no better news and we really need nothing else.

…………………….

I must be honest: I am growing weary of all the talk in Christian ministries that borrows language from the business world and corporate culture that stresses a person’s value boils down to their values. I can think of little else that seems to me now so antithetical to the Gospel: God loves you just because he loves you just because he loves you—not because of any so-called “values match” with an “organization” he is (probably not) building. If the Church is to truly be the Body of Christ, it is time for us to reckon with just how counter-cultural the Gospel is. Grace is prophetic: the Good News of grace disrupts the corporate system that measures a person’s worth by their skills, experience (and values).

When the deepest cry of the human heart is to be named worthy just because every person is loved, I have to wonder why we put so much stock in mere “values-assessment”?

We can never look in the face of another human being and not see the image of God in them. That’s why God only has one measure for us: the measure of measureless love. People are not to be classified in terms of  “valuable” or “not valuable.” People are to be loved. My heart’s prayer is that we would just learn to love as God loves. Amen.