by Amelia Love

Created on: December 18, 2010   Last Updated: December 25, 2010

Life is not easy, it is replete with struggles and heartaches and even small annoyances. A day began with praises and good intentions can swiftly transform into a day of groaning and failures. We're not able to discern the spiritual battle that is waging around us even though we're regularly drawn into it. So the struggles and heartaches and small annoyances easily weigh us down, and our failures begin to consume us.

There is a lady at my church who bubbles over with joy. In my current struggles, I would expect this would annoy me, but it doesn't. In fact, I find myself regularly amazed at the joy she finds in little everyday experiences. She doesn't deny that life is hard. She just gets so much joy out of small delights that, even in the midst of daily irritations, her joy overflows. I feel honored to be in her presence at church, and sometimes I sit and watch her and just wonder. I suspect I'm encouraged by her so much because I'm looking forward to the day when the little irritations don't mean so much to me anymore, and I'm finally able to be overflowed with the daily delights that are obvious gifts from my Father in Heaven.

I know what those daily delights are. It's when I look into the sky and just for a moment are lost in the wonder of it all. I can't believe how beautiful it is, how strange and awesome its depth and how majestic the clouds in their simplicity. And then I feel a light breeze toussle my hair and am awestruck with the realization that God formed this expanse to envelop me in warmth and protection, that beyond is an even greater expanse that stretches the imagination, cold and dark and endless. And then a tiny giggle of wonder and delight escapes and my friend looks at me as if I had quite lost my mind, and the moment ends.

They are childlike delights. And I believe they are one of the reasons we must be like a child to see the kingdom of God. God loves to delight us, and He endeavors to do it everyday in so many small ways. Most of the time, we are too busy to notice. Or we are too consumed with our daily irritations to care.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my neighbors witnessed her husband in the midst of childlike delight. She had become worried because he was taking so long in the bath, and she suspected he might be having difficulties because of his recent surgery. She went into the bathroom to ask if everything was okay and found him looking down into the tub with wide eyes. "Yeah," he said. "I'm just watching the water go down the drain." Then he ran his hand through the swirling water with a huge grin on his face. My friend shook her head. "I just didn't know what to think about that," she told me, smiling. Definitely childlike delight!

It happens everyday - gifts from God meant to delight our hearts and souls. Most of the time, we miss them. We are quick to start the next task or brood over the latest failure or irritation. Or we are bent over with life's struggles and tribulations, too concerned with how we can fix the latest problem to notice the latest enchantment. Or we are certain that we are far too mature to giggle at the sky or run our hands through the swirling water.

I think if we started taking time to enjoy the daily delights from God, we would be awe-struck. Our lives would start to bubble over with unexpected thrills that would make all the other stuff seem so tiny in comparison. The struggles and heartaches and small annoyances just wouldn't be that big of a deal for us anymore. We would be granted a deep and soul-quenching understanding of the delights in the works of our LORD.

Oh, what a constant delight that would be!

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