This morning I was reading C.S. Lewis’s book ‘Reflections on the Psalms’ and I was struck by this quote in the chapter, A Word About Praising. He has been discussing the concept of why we praise God and he has just come to the conclusion that we naturally praise those things we delight in, that we enjoy.
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . .
If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to ‘appreciate’, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
Do you delight in God? Do you enjoy Him? I know I too often I praise out of compulsion rather than delight. I too often praise my favourite sports team or favourite movie with more delight than God. But He is the worthiest of all objects. The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End from whom every good and perfect gift comes from. I think we sometimes forget who we are worshiping. The vast God of the universe. The Star-breather. The Lover of our souls.
Let’s reflect on who God is this week and begin to delight in the vastness of his beauty and power. Let’s accept His invitation to enjoy Him and begin to learn what it means “to be in perfect love with God”.
Another great quote by Jonathon Edwards along the same lines…
“So, God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways:
1. By appearing to … their understanding.
2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself … God is glorified not only in His glory being seen, but by [His glory] being rejoiced in. When those who see it, see it for what it is, God is glorified. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart.
God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it.”