Delight

Delight is a word that feels good in my mouth. I wrap my tongue around it with joy. It's like ice cream. My kids especially delight in ice cream, their excitement is palpable.

What do I delight in? A good shot of espresso for one. The day I replaced the pump in our coffeehouse espresso machine and pulled our first really good shot was a day of delight. I was hopping around the room hooting and shouting. I was so gleeful that tears came to my eyes as I giggled like a little girl. I'm a geek. I know.

So many things in my life have been delightful: realizing again how much I love my wife, getting a computer to work, really good Greek food or my kids quoting rhymes from The Princess Bride (Does anybody want a peanut?).

I was floored today with a verse from Psalm 149.

For the LORD takes delight in his people;
he crowns the humble with salvation.

Let the saints rejoice in this honor
and sing for joy on their beds.

That God would delight in me somehow hit me hard. It was somehow to tangible and rich. Sobs were stuck in me. It was too much, like when our kids are so upset they can't even cry, they just stand mouth agape, confusion in their eyes wondering why nothing is coming out. It is indeed humbling - his delight.

Is there sex in heaven?

Holy Longing talks about a heavenly sexuality. I have been thinking along these lines for a while, so here is a good chunk of what Rolhieser said:

Janis Joplin was once asked what it was like being a rock star. She replied: “It’s pretty hard sometimes. You go on stage, make love to fifteen thousand people, then you go home and sleep alone.”

Jesus was once asked, as a test: If a woman marries seven times and all her husbands die before she dies, whose wife will she be after the resurrection? He answered that, after the resurrection, we will no longer marry or be given in marriage.

These two answers Janis Joplin’s and Jesus’, are not unconnected. Each, in its own way, says something about the all embracing intent of our sexuality. What Janis Joplin is saying is that, in our sexuality and our creativity, we are ultimately trying to make love to everyone. What Jesus is saying is not that we will be celibate in heaven, but rather that, in heaven, everyone will make love to everyone else and, already now, we hunger for that within every cell of our being. Sexually our hungers are very wide. We are built to ultimately embrace the universe and everything in it.

To understand our sexuality and to live with its unfulfilled tensions, it can be most helpful simply to understand this. In loving, the ultimate wound is not to be able to marry everyone. The greatest human hunger, felt in every cell in our being, is that we cannot be completely united with everyone and everything....

It is important to understand this, but it is also important not to misunderstand it. Because our sexuality is ultimately geared to embrace everyone does not mean that we can be promiscuous and, already here in this life, try to live that out. In fact, paradoxically, it means the opposite. Only God can sleep with everyone, and thus, only in god can we sleep with everyone. In this life, even though our sexuality has geared up for universal embrace, we only have two options that are life-giving: Either we embrace the many through the one (by sleeping with one person within a monogamous marriage) or we embrace the one through the many (be sleeping with no one, in celibacy). Both of these are ways that will eventually open our sexuality up so as to embrace everyone. If we go the route of promiscuity, eventually, we will embrace no one.

Look here for what I take from this.