Imagination: A God of Delight

"Delight thyself also in YHWH (the Imagination of the Ineffable!!);
And He shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (Psalms 37:4 KJV).

I got to reading C. F. Rehnborg's Jesus and the New Age of Faith again a few nights ago. It is getting harder and harder to find any text in it that is NOT underlined. I have taken to making huge asterisks in the margin for the BIG points. The bigger the insight, the bigger the asterisk. Now I need bigger margins. I was delighted to find that the C. F. Rehnborg Literary Foundation has issued a year 2000 reprint.

Rehnborg was working in China in the 1920's, and was set upon by missionaries there who wanted to convert him to Christianity. He did not buy into their views of the Bible, and instead analyzed and dissected it to find out that the "big deal" in it really was. He excoriates Paul and all the mystical Jesus stuff of his invention, and by shifting out all the "BS" extracts as by miracle what Jesus actually taught. Which is that God is beneficent by nature: loving, giving, out-flowing. That is our calling.

Remember how Jesus' mind filled with the Holy Spirit - God - as a dove? From this he headed east into the wilderness to be with the outcasts. He found God's love and mercy and grace there, without their rote religiosity. That God doesn't care squat for formality and ritual, but for love, mercy, and grace. Rehnborg proffers that faith is to be placed in that love.

I turn that nicely here: I propose that the Ineffable has developed in self-awareness throughout Its existence. That is why we, Its manifestation, are going through this process. IN EACH THING IT HAS DISCOVERED OF ITSELF, IT HAS BEEN DELIGHTED. In each thing that It can do, it has been delighted. The nature of God is to be delighted with himself in all that he is and does. Who wouldn't be if he were him?

Well, we are!! Rehnborg interestingly says concerning Jairus' daughter and Jesus' saying to Jairus, "Fear not; only believe." "Believe what? That Jesus had and would use the power to resurrect the daughter? This is not a possible consideration, because Jesus taught again and again that one accepted the manifest will of God evidenced by the existence of a fact. Jesus had simply said to the father that he was to believe his daughter lived, despite what the others were saying, and that Jesus himself believed it. Again and again, he told individuals that their own faith was what brought a desired result. Never did Jesus say he himself had answered the prayer of the asker, but the 'power of God.' He taught, in nearly the same words over and over again, 'as you believe, so shall it be.' In homely words, Jesus would have had little use for those who go to church to pray for rain and leave their umbrellas at home" (p. 290).

Be delighted! Abraham laughed! Delight is the evidence of faith, the substance of what is not seen but is given. We have received, for God heard what we said . . . in our delight!