Tag: Satisfaction

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Jesus Is Our Delight

My dear sisters,

Annabelle, my three-year-old daughter, loves the Muppets. She was watching a part of the “Muppets take Manhattan” this morning and my heart lightened as my own childhood memories rushed colorfully through my mind. The wonder of creativity, the awe of how each Muppet changed costumes, how they rode bikes and got wet without getting wet, and the intertwining humor with memorable stars. Add my brothers watching beside me each night at 7, and I felt the feeling of delight well up.

Why do certain things give us delight? In fact, what is delight and why do I get it with the Muppets, for heaven’s sake?!

Scripture says that all good things come from above, so I decided to look up “delight” in a concordance rather than a dictionary. I found that we are to delight in the Word, in the law of the Word, in righteousness, in the Saints…we are to delight to draw near to God, delight in God, delight in truth, and in righteous works. The list is actually pretty long, but do you see the same theme that I am seeing? We are to delight, or be satisfied, in all that God is for us in Jesus. Perhaps the Jesus part is not as clear, so lets look a bit closer.

We delight in the law because that is the Word of the Lord. If we delight in what He says and commands, then we are delighting in God because that is how He expresses Himself. When we delight in righteousness, or right things, we are delighted in the Lord because all that He does is right and good! When we delight in the Saints, we are delighting in the Lord because what draws us to saints is their Christ-likeness. Jesus is the Word, He fulfilled the law perfectly, and He is the God-Man that shows us the perfect character of God. So when we delight and are satisfied in all that He is for us, it brings joy.

So what about the Muppets? Well, God is a creative God. He made amazing, exotic, and funny looking creatures in land, air, and sea. He gave us food that tastes bitter, sweet, sour, and salty. He gave people talents to paint the Mona Lisa, write symphonies, sing to melt our hearts, write words that bring us to places we’ve never been, and imagination to come up with animated, talking stuffed animals! I delight in the Muppets because it is a picture of God’s creativity and imagination! I delight in my brothers’ company because God made us for fellowship and company.

Sweet sister, delight in the Lord today. He, in His kindness, gives common grace to all mankind to see pictures of Himself each day. We delight in his character, and the many forms we see it displayed on this earth and in His Word.

Your Sister in Christ,

Colleen

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Eternity In Our Hearts

Dear sister,

This week I started reading Ecclesiastes. It is an odd book. The theme that Solomon seems to be driving home is that everything is meaningless. It doesn’t sound like a particularly biblical message, does it?

Ecclesiastes is about a man who had everything the world had to offer. Solomon even says, “And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure” (2: 9, 10). He had fame, honor, great riches, and every pleasure known to man. Yet, he says, “All is vanity.”

Today we see the heart of man pursuing satisfaction in similar things—fame, fortune, sex and every pleasure imaginable—there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). But Solomon confirms from experience that even all of this does not satisfy the longings of the human heart. Moreover, Solomon seems to be asking, “What is the point of my toil? Why am I working so hard?” He acknowledges that earthly rewards are temporary and our desires are never fully met.

Maybe you’re asking the same question. You think, “I wake up; I go to work; I come home; I eat, drink and sleep; and the next day I do it all over again.” Perhaps you, like me, are looking for meaning in the mundane and purpose in the repetitive. We enjoy the fruits of our labor but not without sometimes making them our idols. We experience pleasure but it never lasts. So what is the point?

The funny thing about the apparent vanity of life is that this is how God made it. Yes, the world we live in is broken and not how God created it to be, but he did establish seven days that would repeat every week, and he established morning and night, a cycle earth would complete daily. He intended for man to work six out of those seven days every week. We are to honor the Sabbath weekly, etc.

So how does Solomon answer our question? In chapter 3 Solomon says, “He [God] has put eternity into man’s heart” (v. 11). We weren’t created for the temporary and fleeting. Our hearts were made for eternity, to live in perfect communion with God. Consequently, the things we experience on earth will never satisfy our hearts. We are longing for something much greater than this world will ever be able to offer. So let us seek to honor God by living for eternity in the every day.

Yearning with you,

Kayla