Coming into Monday Spoiled

My dad loved nothing more than to help us out. I wish I had kept some accounting journal over the last few decades, so I could show you how many times he paid for things like new tires, credit card debit, appliances, and crunched fenders, to say nothing of how many broken everythings he repaired for us.

Sometimes I would try to feign a humble decline of his help, in a show of being a responsible adult.

Dad, ever blunt, would say, Are you stupid?

He made it clear that if a generous gift was being offered only an idiot would refuse it. So I learned to ask for big help and happily skip away from him with my needs met.

When faced with a consistently generous benefactor, you learn to stop pretending you don’t want help. 

You’ll understand, then, how I feel when I come upon Psalm 90:14 (NIV):

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,

that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

See how the psalmist doesn’t say please? He prayerfully demands satisfaction, and I think he must have been a spoiled child like I was.

Because for us spoiled ones, we imagine God offering us joy and all of his power and resources to help us out –and wouldn’t we be stupid not to reach out and take it?

I’m reading Sheldon Vanauken’s memoir, A Severe Mercy, and he says this:

If the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest.

…If he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love.

Right here, on a Monday, God offers us the highest of emotions.

Joy.

Centered in his unfailing love for us.

I’m too desperate to wait for Friday to roll around so I can be glad. I want joy NOW (I say in my best Veruca Salt impression.) I’m reaching for that unfailing love for this day. Gladness for this day.

So let me say to you, Be smart.

Will you reach out for the satisfaction God is offering you?