Psalm 4:7 You have put gladness in my heart, more than in the season that their grain and wine increased.
My stretch in front of the morning fire lengthens and I embrace you, embracing me. Children still reading, still quiet, in the stillness you whisper. Your hush-lipped deliverance, received without a sound, is loud in my heart. Its contrast, stark, against nature of flesh I so often give into.
You speak gladness into my being.
The fact that you are a glad God has taken me years to accept, my defenses against this argument finally melting. The joy and delight in your countenance, always has been, but still ever-new to me.
You are a glad God and I worship you, in your gladness. Welcoming eyes, sliver of a knowing smile at your daughter who is hungry but fails often, and face ruddy with a father’s pride. Where I see new wrinkles and gray, you see beauty and youth.
When I see you this way, the way you that you are, I can’t help but receive your eminence as nearness.
And as I adore you in your glad nature, your gladness rubs off on me.
When the world around me leaves me empty, you promise an altered state. You create a reality by which I can live that pays no attention to the things I so subtly look to for strength. An alternative existence, this gladness, that stretches from the lowest valley to the highest peak. It permeates me and every ebb and flow of my story.
I worship you in Your gladness, and I receive an impartation of gladness. No strife in my home, no strife in my heart, no pit of circumstance can take away your morning’s offering.
I receive. I step in. I press in. I ask for the lens of gladness over the whole stretch of my life.
And I expect that You who came forth from grave’s sting with gladness, will not hold back.
Glad-God, changing me into glad-hearted.
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This space is my canvas to adore God, my new necessary. I made it public in hopes to spur others to use these same verses for their own expressions of looking up at Him. For an explanation on these Morning Chai devotions, click here. For a more detailed account of why I spend time adoring God, check out this post.
