ENJOY! (Reflections from Sunday's Sermon)

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Rwth preached yet another wonderful sermon this past Sunday reminding us to enjoy the wonderful provisions from God in our lives, and letting our joy overflow to bless others. Here are a few excerpts to start your week!

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Our Scripture reading from 1 Timothy points a way for us.  In verses 17 and 18, Paul asks Timothy to tell people who are rich to not think more highly of themselves and not to get inordinately attached to their wealth.  He then directs their attention rightly: “Instead,” he says, “they need to hope in God, who richly provides everything for our enjoyment.  Tell them to do good, to be rich in the good things they do, to be generous, and to share with others.”

Elsewhere in Scripture, we learn that God delights in all that God has made.  God enjoys creation.  God’s enjoyment overflows into all that God makes and gives.  It’s God’s own enjoyment that richly provides everything for our enjoyment.  Paul directs us to put our hope in this God—the God who enjoys.  There’s no need to fear that God will withhold or that the things that God creates for our good are somehow bad.  When we truly hope in God and fully enjoy what God provides, then there’s no need to grasp or hoard or avoid.

Just as we experience our enjoyment as an overflow of God’s enjoyment, so too, our enjoyment will overflow to others—and bless them.  When we truly experience enjoyment, we want to make joy for others.  After Paul tells us to hope in God who richly provides everything for our enjoyment, he then says “to do good, to be rich in the good things we do, to be generous, and to share with others.”  The grace of true enjoyment is that we want to do good, we want our to give our joy to others in good deeds, in generosity, and in sharing.  It’s the nature of enjoyment to enlarge and expand: from God’s enjoyment, to ours, and from ours to others’. 

So, when we are tempted to grasp or to hoard or to avoid God’s good gifts, how do we learn to enjoy? 

We learn to embrace endings, to graciously accept that all good things have natural conclusions.  We learn to give thanks to God and let go of delights when it’s time.  We remember the good things, and we give ourselves space to feel the fullness of satisfaction.

We learn to look forward in trust to enjoying life’s goodness again because God is faithful and it is God’s nature to make and give joy.  God’s goodness never ends. We even have this hope when it seems like we’ll never enjoy anything ever again. After nights of weeping, “joy comes in the morning.” There are always new beginnings—when life and all of its goodness rise anew. 

We learn courageously to allow ourselves to feel empty, knowing by faith that such emptiness will deepen our capacity to enjoy—and to give joy to others.

We learn how to savor, to experience life’s delights with exquisite attentiveness, gratitude, and patience.

And we learn to become joy-makers and joy-givers.  Like God, we practice providing good things for others’ enjoyment.


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