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JUNE 13, 2012
‘FEEL HIS PLEASURE’
“At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called
‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. (Genesis
2:23-24, NLT)
I loved the New Living Translation’s rendering of today’s passage. It gives us a feeling of how Adam felt
when he saw Eve. “At last!” he exclaimed.
How excited do you think Adam really felt when he first saw Eve? Well, here’s an idea: How did you feel when you
made your first par? How about your first birdie? What about your first hole-in-one?
But golf, like life, is rarely completely satisfying. We get excited when we make a great shot, but unless it goes in
the hole, we wish it was better. Or we post a great score but whine over how it could have been lower.
When I consider these verses from Genesis, though, I find an apex of excitement. This is because in our full reading of
Scripture, we know that God casts us as the bride and his Son as the groom. Through Adam’s pure example, we recognize that God is excited about you and me. He loves us immeasurably!
In my own experience, I really enjoy seeing my wife get excited about making a great golf shot, making a birdie (it
used to be pars!).
I believe God feels the same way when we feel joy and happiness. He is on our side, wanting the very best for
us—which includes some of our earthly pleasures but stretches far beyond them too.
In the Academy Award-winning movie Chariots of Fire (1981), the filmmakers portrayed the Scottish athlete and missionary Eric Liddell. Standing in the rain before a crowd that had assembled to see him run, Liddell delivered these words: “You came to see a race today. To see someone win. It happened to be me. But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I
want to compare faith to running in a race. It’s hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape—especially if you’ve got
a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe your dinner’s burnt. Maybe you haven’t got a job. So who am I to say, ‘Believe, have faith,’ in the face of
life’s realities? I would like to give you something more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. And where
does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, ‘Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. If with all your hearts, you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find
me.’ If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run a straight race.”
They are words of charge. But they were words delivered by a man who knew his purpose and found joy in pursuing it. In
the movie, Liddell’s character notably said, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
Pleasure is given to us by God. It is what we find when we pursue him wholly and with eternity in mind. Eric
Liddell’s last days were lived on the mission field in China, where he died of a brain tumor in an internment camp at the age of 42. There’s no pleasure in that, of course, unless your eyes
are fixed beyond. Eric Liddell’s eyes always were. Where, we must keep asking, are our own eyes looking?
--
Dereck Wong
June 13, 2012
Copyright © 2012 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday through Friday and is archived by passage
and topic at www.linksplayers.com.
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