Joy in Mad Max
When is the last time you experienced utter delight? A moment in time you would bottle up and savor if you could. These moments are usually not elaborate or planned and have a way of capturing us unexpectedly. We might describe it with the phrase “caught in the moment” when joy collides with reality like a tidal wave.
A recent experience left the kids and me basking in delight. My friend let me borrow his 1973 CJ5 Jeep that he’s affectionately named Mad Max. It’s a great description of this beastly machine that has monster truck mud tires and more metal than a freight train. No froufrou bells and whistles on this bad boy, just a stirring wheel, 3-speed transmission, a few vinyl seats, and enough straps to keep you loosely tucked in. When you do finally get out of this manly machine, you even smell like you’ve been hanging out in a boiler room!
I love my wife and the mother of my children more than anyone on the planet. Seriously, she’s incredible in every way, but she does have different safety standards than I. Since she was going out of town, it was a great weekend to take the kids out for a spin in Mad Max. We lost ourselves in laughter as the cares of this world melted away under that hot July sun. I would even say we were delighted!
Delight is more than a good thing; it’s a God thing!
Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
It’s easy to lose our delight the longer we are on this earth. Life has a way of seasoning us and stealing our sense of awe and wonder. But delight is a God thing. It’s one of the reasons Jesus tells us to come to Him like a child. The worries of this world are minimized in God’s presence through our delighting in Him. I will confess the Jeep had a way of bringing out the kid in me, but it wasn’t the Jeep that gave me delight. It was the smile on my children’s faces from being captivated by the moment.
As I observed those smiling faces, I couldn’t help but consider God’s smiling face upon us. When God completed His creation, He took delight in it. He desires that we experience this delight, but it only comes through Him. Sure, we delight in a walk along the seashore, a good meal with friends, or a cruise in a Jeep, but only when we recognize it as a gift from God. We never find delight apart from Him. But in Him, delight is sure to follow. Even in the hard, the good is never far away.
Numbers 6:25-26 might seem like a random verse to pop into my mind cruising in a Jeep with Megan Maroney blasting on the Bluetooth speaker. I said there was no froufrou in Mad Max like radios or anything digital, and that should have included Megan Maroney, but Evelyn insisted! Right there in the middle of Tennessee Orange, the Holy Spirit reminded me of God’s delight in watching us delight in Him.
May the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the LORD look with favor on you and give you peace.
Wow! The face of God shines down as the LORD looks upon our lives favorably! The LORD is delighting in you today. How might we find our delight in Him?