Multiflavored enjoyment.

Rachel Olson — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 03:37:13 +0000

Have you ever noticed the multitudinous types of pleasure God has given us?
There’s that full, down to your toes satisfaction that comes from a mouthful of Swedish chocolate made from 70% cocoa. It comes when the choir’s bass section in such good form you can almost see their voices in the room. It comes when you bury your hands in the warm softness of pure alpaca yarn. This is the pleasure just melts over you, rich and heavy.
Then there’s that tingling pleasure that runs all down your spine when the Latin finally makes sense and Virgil’s image leaps into being in full technicolor. It’s the one that gives you goose bumps when the soprano nails her high notes in Handle’s Messiah. It’s the sudden jig your heart performs when you raise the shade one morning to find you’ve awakened in a fairyland of snow. This is the Buck-you-up-o of God’s pleasures. It hits you at mach ten and leaves you surprised, a little numb, and possibly hyperventilating.
Then there’s simple delight. It bubbles up when you pull a flawless loaf of bread from the oven, or when your classmate wears her bright yellow galoshes to school. It’s not powerful, its not sudden, it just steps in for the little things that “make you happy.”
These were just some things I came up with that make me happy, and it is by no means a comprehensive list. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and oftentimes it is hard to remember the latter. So, I have a challenge for you. What are the things that make you happy? Sit down and think up a list. And don’t just think about what, think about how. How does this thing affect you? What kind of pleasure is it? And then marvel at the many ways God gives us to glorify and enjoy Him.

theology – a broken mold

Multiflavored enjoyment.