“ Delight is incompatible with control. It is built on trust and turns striving on its head.”
The experience of exile, whether physical or metaphorical, is disorienting, lonely, and frightening, full of grief, loss, and uncertainty. It is a vulnerable experience. In Isaiah’ s time, the people tried to overcome that sense of vulnerability in two ways. First, through an enormous exertion of effort in every area of life. And second, through rigid adherence to spiritual practices such as fasting and Sabbath, believing that by perfecting the practices they could manipulate God into giving them the material and spiritual blessings and security they longed for. But their efforts were unsuccessful.“ Why do we fast, and you do not notice? We humble ourselves and you care not!”( Isaiah 58:3). All their striving and strict adherence to the letter of the law was an attempt to exert control in a situation that felt out of control. Along the way, they lost track of the spirit of the Sabbath. They had become enslaved to effort, anxiety, and scarcity. They had re-created Egypt without realizing it.
“ Delight is incompatible with control. It is built on trust and turns striving on its head.”
Isaiah’ s solution was Sabbath delight. Delight is incompatible with control. It is built on trust and turns striving on its head. It naturally reorients our priorities by reminding us of what matters most to us, which we can lose sight of when all we see is scarcity and stress. The people had returned from Babylon, but they had also brought a Babylon mindset home with them.
I wonder if you can relate. Perhaps you have lost the tune of your heart’ s song or fallen out of step with the Spirit. You may feel buried under an ocean of obligations and regrets, or your life may feel vulnerable, steeped in scarcity. Maybe you are seeking stability through trying to control your life( or someone else’ s) or through legalistic adherence to practices like Sabbath. If so, the Sabbath asks you this question: When was the last time you felt genuine delight?
I suspect the delight diaspora today is a vast and sprawling crowd. And understandably so. As my dear friend Kyle Small often says,“ There’ s a lot of pain in the world.” While poet Ross Gay traveled the country promoting his books Inciting Joy and The Book of Delights, he was asked different versions of the same question over and again:“ When all of this is going on... why would you write about joy [ or delight, or gardens, or flowers ]?” 2 The assumption behind the question was that joy and delight are privileges, and that the privilege they represent is the ability to live free from grief, pain, and sorrow. And since grief, pain, and sorrow are unavoidable and ubiquitous, it is at best naive, and at worst offensive, to speak of joy or delight at a time like this. But Gay is adamant that joy and delight are not privileges— and they are not separate from pain, but rather“ what emerges from how we care for each other through those things.” 3 Ross Gay’ s books embody a different approach to the troubles that besiege us: How can you not write about joy and delight when all this is going on?
I’ m with Ross Gay and Isaiah on this. Now more than ever, we need to pour the light of our souls into the world. We need to gather all the goodness and love and forgiveness
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