Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes – God takes pleasure in your pleasure! Dress festively every morning. Don’t skimp on colours and scarves. Relish life with the spouse [people] you love, each and every day of your precarious life. Each day is God’s gift. (Ecclesiastes 9:7-8)
My devotional this morning, based on the above passage, asked this question:
What pleasures do you enjoy that you think God might enjoy with you?
This question was surprising. I have a number of things I enjoy doing, but I have to admit that I often have a vague sense of guilt about them. The activities themselves are fine – knitting, reading, going for a walk, having a nap, sitting in the sun – but they feel like things I’m doing instead of spending time with God. I don’t read the Bible and pray during these activities, and after a full day of doing stuff like this (or squeezing the fun stuff in around work) I often go to bed, see the devotional Bible on the shelf next to my bed and feel bad that yet another day has passed without me ‘getting serious about spending time with God’.
And then I read this morning’s question and that kind of turned everything on its head. Because I HAVE been spending time with God. I haven’t been intentional about acknowledging it, but that doesn’t mean God was absent.
I was chatting with my housemate last weekend and I said that one of these things I am really enjoying about sharing a house with her and her family is how comfortable it is to be in the same room without speaking. We are all voracious readers, and often spend time sitting in the same room reading silently together. Occasionally someone will share a quote or a thought, then we go back to reading. Hanging out together, sharing thoughts if we feel like it, but mostly just enjoying the comfort of having someone else there.
My time with God – what I think is my time with God – is not like that. I try to make it structured. Ordered. Discrete. This block of time right here is me-and-God time, so I need to study hard, come up with an action point and pray the right things in the right way. And then heave a sigh of relief, put the Bible away and get on with the things I enjoy doing.
But not today. Today, I made of point of saying to God, “I’m going to do X. Will you come and do it with me?” Yes, of course I know that he would have been with me anyway, but saying it helped remind me that I was doing the things with God. All the things in my life are things I do with God. Today, God came to work with me on a Saturday and didn’t mind. He hung out with me while I was reading my book. He ate vanilla slice with me. He was there while my friend and I watched telly and chatted.
God and I, we seized life today. Together. And it was good.
This life is... 