the delicious delight of contemplating Christ

We have been contemplating Christ in Colossians. It is a wondrous, awe inspiring spectacle of utter majesty and inexpressible beauty – the image of the invisible God, the first-born, the One through whom and for whom all things were created, in Him the fullness of deity dwells, and so on, and so on, and so on… And you read, and you think, and you shout; and then you think there is more to this, and you cry out with the prayer of Ephesians, oh for a spirit of wisdom and understanding that i may know you, flood the eyes of my heart with light that i may see..

The great sorrow of the church is its inability to see, to meditate on majesty and contemplate glory without props, the special music, the choir, the excitement; the inability to be still, and not for five minutes but an hour, two, three, four devoted to sitting at his feet, drinking in His presence, listening to the beat of His heart and receiving revelation. To know Him, to see Him, to derive delight solely from Him, to think on Him such that what is birthed in our hearts is unmitigated joy and a compulsive desire to celebrate and praise Him, to extol His works and proclaim His love.

He truly is that delightful; and it is not to be found in many of our religious activities, nor in laying on of hands but in chewing on these same oft read words and extracting the substance and flavour of them anew; it is to be found in thinking on the same old truths and mulling over them till the Holy Spirit takes us beyond the visible and sheds light that causes us to thrill with excitement. That is where passion for the kingdom, for the gospel, for the Son comes from, that is where delicious delight proceeds from, that is where the sweet savouring of God comes from, that is where we must go to find it.