Our Father’s Delight
The Lord reproves him whom He loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
—Proverbs 3:12
If your soul feels a little dark and dry lately, I recommend spending some time with a small child. It doesn’t have to be your own.
My days of raising my own babies are long past. I don’t mind that. Raising babies is exhausting! I’m thankful God gave me four beautiful, healthy babies to raise, but every season has its blessings, and I enjoy having grown children now. They still require a lot of care, but it’s different now. I continue to learn a lot about God’s heart from parenting, even as I fall excruciatingly short of His patience and love. But the glimpse is still significant. I melt knowing that I am His beloved daughter.
I recently re-entered the world of babies, and I am re-learning some old lessons at a whole new level. For various reasons, a little over a year ago, I asked God to provide a way for me to earn a little extra cash without me having to work away from home. A young couple in our church was expecting a baby, and I suspected they would need childcare. I made a proposal and a few months later, Isabel started coming to our house. I never imagined what a gift her presence would be to our family. My husband joyfully anticipates coming home at lunchtime to snuggle her. My 19-year-old daughter, who often stays in bed suffering from headaches, sits up and smiles when I bring Isabel into her room. My other kids find themselves likewise sucked in by her irresistible charm. She works this magic by just being herself.
Of course, there is no adult who can match Isabel for cuteness and cuddliness. But sometimes when we are sitting on the living room floor playing together, I wonder if God delights in me like I delight in her. I’m definitely not that cute.
Recently, she found my phone lying on the floor and picked it up. She can’t turn it on, but she knows it is something wondrous and important. So, after turning it over multiple times, she decided to try a taste. I wanted her to hear my “no” without feeling scolded or rejected. Tricky one that. A little game ensued.
“No, Isabel, not in your mouth.” I pull her hand away gently.
She moves the phone away from her mouth. But only for a second. Keeping her eyes locked on mine, back towards her mouth it goes, slowly, like she is hoping I won’t notice.
“No, no, Isabel. You can look, but you can’t put it in your mouth.”
I think I see her eyes almost squint as if she’s saying “You don’t seem to understand, lady. I have set my heart on tasting this thing and I won’t be content until I can at least try it.”
“Isabel, I’m going to take the phone away and we’re going to find something else to play with.” I love that diversion and distraction still work most of the time at this age. Without a fuss, we switch to playing with her moonball.
I’m always curious about what babies are thinking. I remember as a very little girl thinking that if I pulled my dress up over my head I would become invisible. Imagine my alarm when I peeked over the hem and saw that the big, huge adult I was trying to hide from was still looking in my direction! And smiling! I don’t know when I finally figured out that my attempts to hide were so exhibitionistic.
Does Isabel think that if she maintains eye contact with me, I won’t notice the slow movement of the phone towards her mouth? Does she know that my love for her is just as strong when I say no? Does she feel the rejection that I sometimes feel when someone tells me no? Isabel has not yet learned to feel shame. It will come soon enough. It is the human condition. But today, she gladly returns to my arms knowing that nothing has changed between us.
In his masterpiece sermon The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis exclaimed, “I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.” We think that humility means that we disappear into insignificance and must squelch any longing that we have to be seen, recognized, and appreciated. Lewis thought so too until he began thinking of the way a child wants to please its parents, a pupil its teacher, or a dog its master. Surely the desire to please the beloved is a holy desire. Lewis realized that humans are meant “to please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
Obviously, Lewis is not talking about being a self-obsessed, praise junkie. He is pointing to core holy desires that underlie our misguided attempts to seek the approval of others at nearly any cost. Such desperate attempts are often rooted in feelings of shame, whether legitimately because we have done wrong and need to repent, or illegitimately because we have felt unseen and unloved by those we depend on. Either way, shame elicits painful disconnection.
Conversely, neurotheologian Jim Wilder teaches that being delighted in is the only way to experience joy. “Each of us enters life wired for joy. Joy means someone is glad to be with me. We take joy very personally; we also take lack of joy very personally. Joy grows when people see my weakness and needs, yet still take care of me. Joy disappears when people ignore me or exploit my weaknesses” (Joy Starts Here, 11). We never outgrow this fundamental longing to be delighted in. According to Wilder, joy comes in the context of relationship; “Joy is the twinkle in someone’s eye when they see us; joy is the sense we are special before we have to do anything to prove it.”
Shame and joy are at odds with each other — they cancel each other out. Somewhere along the line, we get the message that maybe our caregivers don’t delight in us. Maybe sucking on their phone makes them stop loving us. Sometimes the rejection is all too real. Relationships can be dangerous. We figure out ways to manage how others see and feel about us — hoping to ease the pain. Like Adam and Eve, we dive for the bushes and emerge with a hastily constructed, leafy camouflage. Or maybe we pull our dress up over our heads thinking that is the best way to be safe. We begin to think that no one, not even God, can love us unless we present ourselves in a certain way. We lose our capacity for joy.
We insult God’s fatherly love for us when we misrepresent His heart in this way. Of course, he is not going to smile at us when we insist on doing things that hurt us or others — sometimes He has to say a hard “no”— but His is always a face of love. He sees behind our ridiculous attempts to hide. He sees the real us and still loves us enough to die for us. In his illuminating book The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves, psychiatrist Curt Thompson writes,
There is no hint of shame in His gaze or His voice. Our attention is drawn so irresistibly to Him and how He is attending to us that we lose all awareness of the shame that has for so long kept parts of us hiding in the dark. . . . As we live faithfully, we actively imagine that He joyfully delights in being in our presence and that all we do, we do with God, mindful that we live in dependence on Him and each other.”
Honestly, this kind of delight feels believable as I sit here with Isabel on the floor. God’s heart is so much bigger than mine, and I’m absolutely smitten.
Wilder also believes that the best way for us to return to joy when shame has squelched it is to visualize what the Father’s delight in us might look like at that moment. Our Father longs for us to return to the mutual joy of re-connection with Him. Writes Wilder, “Joy is the smile we cannot help but share. Joy is so special that God offers joy as His reward . . . . There is a reason why God promises joy more often than He promises eternal life” (Joy Starts Here, 7).
As Isabel and I roll a ball back and forth between us, I imagine God’s delight, feeling His love wash over me, His beloved. And I can’t stop smiling.
