Daylight

You know those moments when the Lord suddenly and inexplicably illuminates something which you thought you knew? It's like thinking all along that the first light of dawn is daylight— and then the sun comes up. I love those moments.
Two of them converged on me last night as I was trying to fall asleep, an old one and a new one. The old one, which had to come first, was the realization that “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart,” (Ps. 37:4) might not mean “Find joy in the Lord and He will become a cosmic vending machine,” but rather “Swim ever-deeper into the delightfulness of the Lord and He will invent desires for your heart to have and place them in you.”
The new one sprung from frustration with being told most of my life by the Christian community that unless I'm content in the Lord, delighting myself only in Him, He won't give me a husband. I could waltz that bad theology around the barn in a faded dress (what does that do, after all, but reverse the very faith-and-grace we live by and turn God into— you guessed it— a cosmic vending machine), but the illumination was simply that voicing the desire to be married, praying for it, talking about it, does not constitute an un-delight in the Lord. And here is the convergence: might not that voicing be the appropriate expression of the desires I've gained by delighting myself in the Lord?
I believe so. So I'll go on in that belief until the Lord brings me to another sudden and inexplicable illumination at High Noon. Until then, Thanksgiving Day finds me thankful that He takes the trouble with me, and that He can afford to spend light so lavishly.