Count Your Blessings #143 – Delight

This evening turned out to be quite an unusual one for me – I’m home alone. Sue and Emily are out at a church event, and Jonathan is at a party. So I’m here all on my own. Having done a few of the jobs that have been sitting around on the list for a little while I decided that I fancied a walk. It’s cool this evening, but not raining lovely walking weather.

Out came the trusty iPod which contains a broad selection of music, but as soon as I turned it on I knew where I was going. I selected Music, I then selected Artists and scrolled down to Bruce Cockburn – I perfect fit for the occasion. The last job was to put the iPod into random shuffle, put the earphones in and set off.

These are the first words that I heard:

Amid the rumours and the expectations
and all the stories dreamt and lived
Amid the clangour and the dislocation
and things to fear and to forgive

Don’t forget
about delight
Y know what I’m saying to you
Don’t forget
about delight
Y know

Now there’s a thought – “don’t forget about delight”. That got me thinking for the rest of my walk, where do I find delight.

I thought about the feelings of delight that I had on Saturday. We’ve been decorating our lounge for what seems like forever. Over the last two weeks we’ve been getting the finishing touches sorted out ready for Christmas – a new floor, a new TV and a couple of pieces of furniture. We’ve recently ordered the floor and the furniture but the delivery dates were all somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks away. Knowing everything would be ready for Christmas, but only just, we kind of forgot about it all.

Having been told that the floor would take a couple of weeks, less than a week later it was fitted and it looks very nice indeed.

Having had the floor fitted so quickly we ordered the TV on the Friday with a delivery date a week away – it arrived on the very next day.

We’d also ordered the furniture and been told that it would be four week while I was un-boxing the TV, Sue said – “Come on Rhodes, all we need now is the furniture”.

Less than 5 minutes after Sue’s proclamation the phone rang. Jonathan answered it and to our surprise and delight it was the furniture company. They wanted to deliver weeks early on the following Tuesday. The delight on Sue’s face was wonderful.

My normal expectation when ordering things things is that it normally take longer than first estimated, so it was delightful to have it all sorted out in double quick time.

And it’s still delightful to sit here in the lounge now looking around at a freshly finished living space.

I then started wondering what Jesus would delight in, and whether the Bible talks about him being delighted. The truth is, none of the translations actually say that Jesus was delighted. But they do say that God said that he is delighted in Jesus:

"This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him."

Matthew 17

Now that’s a very interesting thought – the focus of God’s delight is Jesus, perhaps the focus of our delight should be the same. If it’s good enough for God, surely it’s good enough for us.

So lets now forget about delight.