Many people find the New Year to be a helpful time to refocus and recenter on their relationship with God. This series will provide some concrete ways for you to do just that.
The series uses Epiphany (Jan. 6) as a launching point for engaging in specific practices designed to help you find God all day, every day this New Year.
The first posts in this series will lay out the biblical vision for a life of connecting with God at all times. They will also explore some particular ways for doing this based on the work of St. Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises.
Beginning Jan. 6, the posts in this series will give you specific practices to engage in each day in order to grow in your own awareness of and attentiveness to God. These posts will run through Transfiguration Sunday (Feb. 7). The practices in these posts will help you focus on the life of Jesus from his baptism to his Transfiguration.
Finding Fullness in God
Do you have a happy meal? I’m not talking about a kid’s lunch at McDonald’s. What food or meal makes you smile when you think about it?
I have a lot of meals that make me happy. Let me describe one. It’s a meal I’ve enjoyed a handful of times at our local Texas de Brazil.
Let’s start with the salad bar. A feast all by itself. Fifty to sixty mouth-watering wonders. Green leaf lettuce. Heart of Palm. Spinach. Romaine lettuce. An addictive Ranch dressing. Grilled asparagus. Artichoke hearts. Baby corn. Green olives. Black olives. Sushi. Smoked salmon. Lobster bisque. Marinated mushrooms. Savory cheeses. Cured meats. On and on it goes.
And then there is the main dish. Waiters walk around with skewers of sizzling meats plucked seconds ago from the kitchen flames. They offer more than a dozen delicacies such as filet mignon; top sirloin; beef rib; flank steak; chicken breast in bacon, and chicken leg Parmesan; pork loin; pork spare ribs; lamb chops; leg of lamb; and sausage. I eat and eat until I cannot eat anymore. And I’m so happy. So satisfied. It’s a delightful feeling.
David uses this image in Ps. 16:
“in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11 ESV).
That word “fullness” is used elsewhere to describe someone who eats until completely satisfied:
-
“If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish…” (Deut. 23:24 ESV)
-
“The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely.” (Lev. 25:19 ESV)
Both texts describe the Promised Land. And one of the best things God can say about that home is that they’ll be able to devour not only to their heart’s content, but their stomach’s content. It’s going to be a place where there’s enough food to “eat their fill.” That’s the phrase David uses in Ps. 16. David is describing the joy that comes from your favorite meal. The happiness that results when we eat until we’re stuffed.
And that kind of joy, David says, is available when we encounter the presence of God:
“in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11 ESV).
The “presence” is what Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden (Gen. 3:8)
The “presence” is what God promised to send with Moses into the wilderness (Ex. 33:14).
David is saying it is possible to so live in the presence of God that we experience that pleasantly-stuffed feeling, that what-I-just-ate-was-SO-good feeling. It is possible to live so connected to God that this kind of satisfying joy becomes a constant companion.
But David not only reminds us of the joy of our favorite food. He also reminds us of the joy of our favorite places. In Ps. 16 he writes not only about happy meals. He also writes about happy places. Do you have a happy place? A place where, when you arrive, peace also arrives? Rest also arrives? A big sigh of relief arrives? A place you can’t wait to get to and can’t stand to leave?
One of mine is the Memphis Botanic Garden. I once spent every afternoon in the Memphis Botanic Garden for thirty days in a row. I still stop by. It’s a place of much peace and even more beauty. There is a calm which overcomes me as I walk through the shaded paths and gaze at the beauty of the flowers, the bees and the trees.
Or consider some of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In the United States, they include Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and the Great Smoky Mountains. There are places on earth that fill us.
David is thinking of these places when he writes Psalm 16. He closes the psalm with these words:
“in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11 ESV).
As we have seen, that word “fullness” comes from the realm of food. But the word “pleasures” is associated with places. David uses this word earlier in v. 5-6:
“The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” (Ps. 16:5-6 ESV)
The word “pleasant” is the same word translated “pleasures” in v. 11. Here, David testifies that the joy/pleasure/pleasantness he feels in the presence of God is similar to the joy/pleasure/pleasantness we might feel when we are in our happy place. David calls God his “portion,” “lot,” “lines,” and “inheritance.” He’s using images from the time when territory was assigned to the tribes of Israel. David’s imagining what it must have been like the tribes of Israel viewed the portion, lot, and lines of the territory granted to them as an inheritance. David’s picturing what it must have been like for each tribe to feel the rush and excitement of realizing that this happy place was now home. He’s picturing how joyful those places made the Israelites. That, David writes, is how he feels about God. Being in the presence of God is like being in the very best of happy places:
“in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11 ESV).
In sum, David claims that living in God’s presence is similar to the happiness we experience after a full meal. Living in God’s presence is analogous to the satisfaction we feel when we are in a place we love. In other words, being in God’s presence is like the joy of the best “happy meal” or “happy place.”
So what? Why does that matter? It matters because we all long for happiness. We all long for joy–especially when times are tough. In his book All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr tells of a teenager named Marie-Laure who is trapped in a small French town named Saint Melo during World War II. It’s a discouraging time. A time of great sadness. One day Marie overhears her uncle and aunt, with whom she’s found refuge, talking about death and dying. Her uncle seems to have given up. Given into the despair. The war and the German occupation of France are just too much to take. But her aunt says to the uncle, “Don’t you want to be alive before you die?” That is, even now, even in this darkest of times, don’t you still want to find something to live for? Don’t you want to experience joy and happiness? Don’t you want to be alive?
That’s why this issue raised by David in Ps. 16 matters. Because joy and happiness are what we all want. We all want to be alive before we die. We all want to experience genuine, authentic, deep, lasting, overwhelming, joy in this life. What every human is longing for is a source of joy and happiness that doesn’t run out no matter what else is going on.
And that is what David is promising. This deep delight can be found in the presence of God. The joy of being in God’s presence is the joy we all live for and long for. What David is describing in Ps. 16 is something we hunger for. We all want to be happy. And the fullest experience of joy is found in connecting with the presence of God:
“in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11 ESV).
Finding God in All Times
But there’s something seemingly disappointing about the presence of God–it seems fleeting and temporary. It’s great that David promises that we can have immense joy when we connect with God’s presence. But the truth is that we rarely seem to be able to connect to God’s presence. We taste that joy once in awhile, in special moments, on certain occasions. At a worship service. On a mountain top. At a retreat. When listening to sacred music. But most of our days seem to be spent apart from that presence. On most days we don’t really sense any presence of God and thus we miss the joy David promises. What good is it to say that we can have great joy by connecting with God’s presence when that presence seems so fleeting?
Actually, David knows something else. It is one of the most important truths of biblical spirituality. Here is it: we can encounter the presence of God anytime, anywhere. Despite what we may have experienced in the past, it is possible to connect with God’s presence anytime and anywhere–when changing diapers, when paying bills, when listening to a class lecture, and when running errands. It is possible to experience the presence of God anytime, anywhere. And thus it is possible to experience this joy anytime and anywhere.
This is the testimony of Ps. 139. Again and again David reaches the conclusion that it is impossible to “flee” from God’s “presence”:
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? (Ps. 139:7 ESV).
David envisions the longest day possible. A day when he travels to the highest places, as high as heaven. A day when he travels to the lowest places, as low as the grave. A day when he travels as far north, south, east and west as possible. Yet in every hour and in every place he finds the presence of God. We can connect with the presence of God anytime anywhere.
This is the also the testimony of Ps. 105. There David urges us to “seek his presence continually!” (Ps. 105:4 ESV). God’s presence is not limited to one spot or one hour. It is there continually. God’s presence is available to us anytime, anywhere. And that means this joy David speaks of in Ps. 16 is available anytime, anywhere.
