Delight!

Someone asked me how I would describe the coming year in just one word. My answer is "delight!" I have so much to look forward to: time with family, new friends, work, books to read and new things to learn. I hope to see a new grandson and visit old friends.

Yesterday was my first day back to school. I spent it organizing materials to make lesson planning easier, met with other English teachers, and came home exhausted, but delighted to be able to work. I found this prayer to pray for my students:

"Dear Father,
I pray for students in my care,
Help them learn and grow.
May they ever seek Your face,
Your perfect will to know.
Guide me with Your wisdom
And power from above,
So everything I teach them
Is tempered in Your love.
Amen"

Prayer is even more important to me now that I am older and cannot do as many things as I used to do. Now God calls me to a higher work, which is prayer.

I pray especially for the persecuted Church, Christ's body in this world, who now suffer terrible torments, suffering, and death. The persecution grows fiercer year by year: 165,000 martyrs last year. May they find great courage, hope, comfort, and visions of Heaven to sweeten their dying moments.

How delightful prayer is, to spend time with Christ in contemplation and prayer. "How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved One, with all your delights." Certainly Job's friend Elihu was wrong when he said, "It profits a person nothing to delight in God."

Those who delight in the Lord will ride on the heights of the earth, find salvation and God's steadfast love, be no more forsaken or desolate. All the nations will be blessed and our land will be a land of delight.

The amazing thing is that God delights in us, too! "As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."

There is so much more I want to say about "delight" but another busy day is calling me away.