delight in living

July 3, 2022 • Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Isaiah 66:10-14 (The Inclusive Bible)
Rev. Jeff Wells preaching

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

This is the first Sunday of our new worship series titled, “Play, Create, and Connect: A Summer of Fun and Friendship.” We are gathering each Sunday from now through September 4 for a summer of holy fun! The more formal part worship will be shorter. We will be playful and lighthearted and have time to get to know one another better and deepen the roots of our relationships and community. We’ll have music, preaching, and prayer for about 45 minutes and then go right into fun, community-building activities like a sing-along, yoga classes, dance instruction, Sufi poetry, meals, games, and more. There will be opportunities to connect both on-site and online.  

Today, I am going to speak about delight. Delight might seem like a frivolous topic given what’s happening around us. So much impels us toward fear, anxiety, despair, and hopelessness. Yet, for just that reason, we need delight in order to endure the harder parts of life. 

My title, “Delight in Living” has a double meaning. I wanted to convey that we ought to – we could even say, “God calls us to” delight in being alive. And the second meaning is that we need to seek or create sources of delight in our lives. 

Delight is usually defined as a heightened or extreme feeling of pleasure or satisfaction. I experience delight in discrete moments and feelings, yet often moments of delight strung together, can lead to a more generalized feeling of happiness or joy. Sometimes, we are surprised by delight – to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – but often, delight occurs because we are doing something from which we are likely to feel delight. Because delight is so important in our lives, we ought to intentionally seek it. 

So, as I contemplated this message, I kept thinking about the sources of delight in my own life. I have found that an element of surprise often sparks delight. I enjoy amateur photography and I often photograph – and find delight in – things that are unusual or dramatic, such as this strange tree root growing up from another root and then back down into the ground.

Or, this brilliant yellow mushroom with lighter color patches. It’s no bigger than 4 or 5 inches tall and the round head is about an 1-½ inches in diameter. Yet, what surprising and delightful splash it made when I encountered it in the forest. I have dozens, maybe hundreds of photos of interesting fungi. 

Diane and I were hiking in the Sonoran desert in Arizona in March, we encountered this Saguaro cactus with one branch growing downward, instead of up. It seemed to be reaching for something and I found that delightful. 

And then, there were these lovely yellow flowers – a surprising sign of the beginning of the brief desert spring. 

All of those instances of delight happened while hiking. You could say, “by chance,” yet, whenever I am hiking, I am open to delight. 

This next one came to me – it landed on the railing of the deck of our house. Maybe you are thinking, “It’s just a particularly colorful moth.” But if you notice that the board it is clinging to is a 2 x 4 and get a sense of how big this giant is. This moth had a 6 inch wingspan! And it posed long enough for me to take several photographs and even a short video. 

I also delight in finding the hidden places or hidden views or even hidden history that most people never see or recognize. This is a photo of the underside of the bridge over the Delaware River at the town of Narrowsburg, NY. 

I take pleasure in photography, but it’s in the experience of finding and capturing these especially beautiful, dramatic, or surprising individual moments in time that gives me delight. So, photography is another way I seek and open myself to delight.

My sense of delight also arises in the wonderful pleasures of the familiar – of knowing and being known; of loving and being loved; of accompanying over time. Here is a photo of Diane and Sadie on a hike.

That particular boulder is one of Sadie’s favorite perches. I know and am known by these two lovely creatures, so their antics delight me. And here’s another: 

Sadie loves looking out this window to see what’s happening in the driveway or at the neighbor’s house.

Delight often arises from connecting with old friends. Here I am with former COTV member, Daniel Knox, in California last November. 

And, in meeting and growing relationships with new acquaintances. This was taken in John Cobb’s apartment at Pilgrim Place in Claremont.  

I believe what ties all of these disparate images and delights together is relationship and, in many cases, mutuality. I cannot claim that the tree, fungi, flower, cactus, or giant moth delight in me, by I certainly delight in them and we are undeniably connected in the vast and complex ecosphere in which we coexist. 

Certainly, when it comes to other mammals, I feel a deep kinship. The delight that Sadie brings out in me is palpable. But I elicit delight in Sadie too. Whenever I am away for several hours or especially when I have been gone overnight or for several days and nights, Sadie jumps all over me when I return. We give each other mutual delight. 

My favorite example is our common love of freight trains. I have loved watching trains go by since I was a kid. I even hopped a boxcar in college and rode a 100 miles. 

So, when Sadie was still quite young, whenever I heard a train rumbling in the distance – usually around 10pm – I would shout, “Train, Sadie!” and take her outside to watch it pass by on the other side of the river – the reflection of its headlights shimmering on the water. Now, she gets as excited, if not more, than I do. She usually hears the sound reverberating from the tracks and gets to the door before me. I taught Sadie to delight in watching freight trains. And now we mutually delight in watching them together. 

So, while delight may feel like a very individual experience, I find it is usually quite relational. This relationality and mutuality of delight holds true when it comes to God, too. For the prophet Isaiah, Jerusalem represented an actual source of peace, comfort, and even delight for Jews returning from their long exile in Babylon. And we can hear in this passage a metaphor for the ways God seeks to lure us to peace, comfort, and delight. “Oh, that you may suckle fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may nurse with delight at her abundant breasts!” God delights in us and invites us to delight in God in the multiplicity of ways that may occur. 

So let us strive to delight in our relationships, our life together in community, our connections with the rest of the natural world, and in God who loves and lures us toward the abundant peace, joy, and love.

Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Wells
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