Identity Reimagined: I am God's Delight
Think of how much a parent delights in their child, especially as newborn infants when we sit and simply gaze upon the wonder of that child. Then there are the endless hours of videos and photographs of the child basically doing nothing, but we are infatuated by this love and offer the cooing sighs and singing over the child. The delight does not rest in what the child can accomplish or how much the child will love in return, or who the child will become. In fact any new parent can tell you, a newborn baby in the house is really quite a disrupter to life as we know it. Yet, somehow, the child is simply and solely the delight of the parent.
So it is with God beholding you with wonder. “The Lord, your God is living among you…He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” (Zephaniah 3:17). Joyful songs, poems of love, the delight and gladness of God—this is the foundation of our identity when we live in relationship to God and turn our lives Godward.
I exist because God finds delight in me, in who I am, how I am, what I am—my physical being and characteristics, the way I laugh and sing and sit around, the way I love words and struggle with identity, the moods and habits, and my propensity to get bossy when I’m stressed. God knows and delights in my perseverance, my listening ears, my perfectly straight toes, and every strand of hair on my head. God catches my tears in Divine bottles, labeled, and remembered for eternity. And beyond the outward reality of my existence, God knows the places of my wounding, the tender, hidden heart that self-protects or harbors fear or over-indulges in food, or television, or shopping to ease the pains. And still God delights in me, longs to draw me close and to sing holy poems into my being. I remind myself (and sometimes others) of the words that Mother Teresa said when asked how she knows that she’s doing God’s will. She chuckled and said, “I don’t do the will of God. I am the will of God.”
Oh, to know simply that I exist in God’s delight and by his will and desire to express love into this world. Wouldn’t this reality and truth make all the difference in the world if we truly lived it and saw others in the same light? How do you respond to the idea of being God’s delight?
