Thy Comforts Delight My Soul

This morning I saw God again.  Call it His fingerprints, or footsteps, or voice, or whatever.  I'm quite certain it was Him.

I was just reading along in my Bible, trying to stay focused on what was there.  And this was there.

"In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul" (Psalm 94:19).

The multitude of my thoughts within me.  That applied.  These days it sometimes feels like a ping pong match where the rule for one ball at a time has been misplaced.

So I noticed it.  The verse.  Verses That Apply do that to you.  Make themselves noticed.

And I went on to the end of the verse.  And felt thankful.  Thy comforts delight my soul.  What do His comforts look like?  I thought of a few.

But it was time to hop in my car and go for a happy outing...breakfast with friends.  (Have I mentioned what a Happy Thing my very own little car is?)

And that's when the comforts began to roll.

I turned on my CD...and a blast of "Hallelujah Chorus" met me (yes, a blast, because there are certain songs that need to be played on blast) .  Big and Full and Grand.  I had to sing along (Big and Full and Kind-of-Grand)...whichever part felt like the most funnest at the moment.  (You do know that a car is the best sing-along venue, don't you?  I just try not to have my mouth wide open when I meet other vehicles...other than that, anything goes.)

I rounded a bend in the road...and came upon the river in the morning.  Little bits of almost-mist still hovering, nary a ripple, reflections.

It was along about then that the Verse That Applied came back to me.  And I began to get Beauty Tears and Glory Shivers at the combo of it all.  Whispering and shouting through the multitude of my thoughts within me, Thy comforts delight my soul.

By now my Comfort Sensor was on full alert. A brilliant orange branch here.  That high soprano G.  A whole bush of multi-coloured leaves Just Starting.  King of kings and Lords of lords.  Cresting a hill to layers of varying-haze ridges going on and on in the distance.  And He shall reign for ever and ever and ever and ever.

At dusk, He sent another shipment.  A piece of leftover sunshine gave enough light for a brilliant, high-arching rainbow over the backyard.  The sky was grand, and something about the lighting made the grass a double green and the corn field a perfect autumn-corn-field colour.  I hugged the wall under the eaves to stay dry enough to stand and worship.  Thy comforts delight my soul.

Hallelujah!

Saturday Morning in Heaven

I love Saturdays.  But I love Saturday mornings even more.  The best part of it all is waking up at your own speed...and thinking you should get up...and then that moment of "aahhh" when you realize it's Saturday and you don't need to get up until you jolly well feel like it, and you just settle down deeper into the pillows and luxuriate in the fact.  And you know that even when you do get up, you still have time slotted for no-deadline God Time...bring out the Bible and the journal and whatever else fits the moment.

(Disclaimer:  I realize that not all have this luxury, but I make no apologies for this spot of blessing in my spot of living.  I also realize that not all Saturdays are created equal, so don't worry your heads that this is my experience every week.)

Yesterday was one of the Saturdays where this kind of morning was up for grabs.  I lay there revelling in it...listening to the friendly sounds of the neighbour children having a high old time out on the street, the rattle of the old clunker van and the plop on the driveway as it delivered the morning paper, the hum of the traffic out on the highway.  Then there was the day ahead to plan and anticipate...simple pleasures of shopping, making snow ice, studying to teach Sunday school.  And there was all that time mixed in between to wander current and widely-varied thought trails...events of the week past, tales from Miss Nancy that I was reading before I went to sleep and that call me to deeper Spirit-direction, and what really is the significance of the Ascension (due to said Sunday school lesson)?

On this particular Saturday morning, I "saw" my Saturday morning.  You know, the Better Thing than enjoying SomeThing is when you realize you are enjoying the Thing before it's done and gone.  That happened.  Once upon a long time ago, one of my friends introduced this occurrence to me as a Now Moment.  When you step back and see the Now while it's happening.  So then I had to think about that for a while...

And my brain train took me to Saturday morning in Heaven.  What will it be like to wake up in Heaven and realize I'm there?  The ultimate Saturday morning, I'm thinking.  The work week is finished.  There is nothing I need to get up and make sure happens.  I can rest and revel as long as I like.  I've always been excited about seeing Jesus, and the glory of Heaven, and singing (and singing...and singing), but more and more, one of the best things about Heaven (I think) will be just the Rest.  All things as they are meant to be.  Rightness.  No more wish-it-was-es or wish-it-wasn't-s, no more figure-out-what-I-need-to-do-about-this-es...just settle into my pillows and luxuriate in the fact that I'm Here.  And that I have the whole "day" ahead to get up and spend God Time and explore and fellowship and sing and just Delight.  Aahhh...