Adoration

Yesterday the Mahaney clan caravanned home from Dandridge, Tennessee where we had two delightful weeks together adding many fun and special memories to our family storybook which we will peruse and savor for years to come. Thank you, Scott and Lesa Baker, Bill and Cheri Kittrell and Cornerstone Church of Knoxville for your unbelievable kindness to us, once again!

As a way to prepare us not only to enjoy and be grateful for our vacation, but to also perceive the character of God revealed through this gift of pleasure, my husband read the following C. S. Lewis quote to our family at dinnertime on the very first day:

“Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility….I have tried…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun….If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.”  (as quoted in, When I Don’t Desire God, by John Piper)

These insightful words by Mr. Lewis helped us to understand the distinction between gratefulness and adoration and inspired each of us to try to make our summer vacation into “a channel of adoration.”

Now today – the day after vacation – as I unpack suitcases, do loads of laundry, and head off to the grocery store to restock the refrigerator, I am attempting to make my work into “a channel of adoration”…although I must admit the discipline is a little more difficult, but nonetheless, right and fitting. Thus my prayer today: Heavenly Father, help me to adore you not only for the gift of pleasure but also for the gift of work.