Below was something that I wrote some years ago, and which I’d like to share with you.

Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4

I was struck by this psalm some months ago and from that time on, I had been intrigued. So today I set out to find out what it means to delight in the Lord.

Scripture passages tell us of God’s delight in us, of how God created us out of love in the first instance. Examples of God’s delight for us can be found in Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 18:19, John 15:11, 1 John 4:9.

Psalm 37:4, however, beckons us to delight in God. So the ball is in our court. Now it is our turn to act but how exactly do we show delight in The Lord? I think I found an answer during Mass this particular Sunday. For some mysterious moments I had been filled with the love of God this morning before Mass. I have had such feelings of expanse before and I can only attribute it to God’s grace upon me. God’s grace is poured out without effort on our part. God delights in pouring out His love for us. I can only tell you that this expansive, unexplainable, and indescribable feeling of the love of God is super. It makes me sing “Life is good” in my heart. I analogize this way: God gives me life and now I receive this life through the feeling of God’s immense love for me. In a way I receive life and love from the great I Am which reminds me of the scripture verse in John 10:10, “I have come so that you may have life and have it to the fullest”.

In moments when I experienced unspeakable joy and my heart sings “life is good” I claim God’s grace and I let the feeling seeped deep into my being so that I will always remember God’s goodness towards me.

At Mass this morning I tried to dig into my inner wisdom to see if there is a way that I could understand Psalm 37:4 better so as to share what I perceived as an important biblical exhortation. I got the sense that a person can delight in the Lord when we are in relationship with God. Only when we can treat God as a confidant, or call God a friend or at least be able to allow God to walk alongside us can we claim relationship. If God is up there, sitting on a high and mighty throne, and we see ourselves as unredeemed sinners, we will likely not feel free to have a relationship with the One who first loved us.

This then begs the question: how does one come into relationship with God? I am afraid there is no easy way out. It has been said and written about. We can come into relationship with God when we build prayer practice, when we listen to God in the Word, when we walk with like-minded people, and when we stay in community and communion with God’s beloved creatures. Therefore we see that effort has to be expended on our part! Building relationship that is trusting requires the loved One and the Beloved to open the doors of their hearts.

If effort begets gain, and if we are driven to come to know this God who is waiting for us to return home, then I urge you to make an early start. The delight in coming to know this God is so freeing, so loving and compassionate (traits of our Christian God). Besides, when we come to delight in God, the psalmist says he will give you the desires of your heart. I wonder if this mean our prayers will be answered? This thought is not preposterous since a close relationship with God would mean we know God’s desires (“Will” as some might call it) for us and therefore our prayers will be slanted towards that end.

I figure that other forms of showing delight would include honoring our bodies – using our body to praise and worship God through dance, gestures, songs and music. Can we then not use the beauty to music, songs and dance in their correct forms to delight our fellow human beings and the Lord?