Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Delightful

Ok, I'll admit it, I'm totally a re-poster. This is a post that is acutally a re-post of a repost. It's kind of the explanation of my blog title, and I think that it's important. So anyway... I originally wrote this about 3 years ago while in college (while I still had a xanga, yeah, I did :/). It is in response to Psalm 37:4 which says "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

David says that we are to DELIGHT ourselves in the Lord, yeah? On a total side note for a moment, every translation that I have ever read has translated that word as delight, now...that strikes me as something worth looking at. Well, so...I love words, and I was really kinda wanting to understand the full definition of delight, so I went to my dictionary... now, the definition of delight is something like, find pleasure in, to please, something fluffy. So I said to myself, "hmmm...well, I feel like God wants us to find more than a happy squishy feeling when we think of HIM." Now maybe I'm wrong there, but that's my thought. So...I checked out some synonyms of delight. There were some kinda boring ones that didn't really do much for me, pleasure, joy, blegh whatever, yeah? Ok, so then I saw enthral. Now, as I said, I love words, and the more specific a word is and the more able it is to paint and sculpt and entice emotion the more I absolutely love it. Well, for me, enthral has always kinda been one of those words. I mean, for me it envokes this awesome sense of being completely consumed by something, to the point of not being able to see anything that was outside of the agent of the enthralling, the person or thing that held one enthralled. Ok, so...I already had this image in my head of a person being completely captivated beyond the point of release by anything that they were enthralled with, but I wanted to find the actual definition of enthral. Now here's where it gets really cool to me...the actual meaning of enthral is "To reduce to bondage or servitude; to make a thrall, slave, vassal, or captive of; to enslave." At first glance, I feel like this has a really negative connotation, but it really doesn't! I mean, when you think of enslavement, the first thing that comes to my mind is a sort of beating into submission, but that's not what this is saying at all! This is just saying that you are completely held captive to be made into a slave, but it doesn't say that you were forced there, you just are. You choose to be made a captive. How awesome that we are given the opportunity to be enslaved by the sheer awesomeness of God. We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord. Delight is such an amazing concept of sheer and utter giddiness. Now, imagine if you were completely captivated by that giddiness. You were so filled with joy over God that you were made into a slave by sheer adoration and excitement. Now that is awesome. I think that I would be ok with being delighted, being captivated, being enslaved by God and His awesome wonder...I would be more than ok. I would be complete.

So now, I have made it my goal in life to live with delight, to live my life in complete delight of the Lord... it's a work in progress :)

5 comments:

Julie said...

I love your attitude! And I love the title of your blog, you rock!

Amy said...

Very nice! With all of the people who are unhappy with their lives, it's refreshing to read about your happiness :D

Elena said...

Thank you for visiting Idaho today. And potato ice cream is actually delish. Potato is only an ingrediant in it, I think the starch or something helps make the ice cream extra creamy.

Kathi Roach said...

Love this Lauren!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog today on the BATW flight to New Zealand. I'll be sure to let you know when I find the hobbits which will be real soon as the are going to be making the movie here soon.

Loved your blog title and can totally see where you're coming from.