God's Delight

I'm getting closer and closer to the finish line in scanning all our old family photos. I know some of you are tired of hearing about this, but bear with me. I told my mom over the weekend where I was on the project and she said, "Oh, I found another box or two you haven't seen yet." Needless to say I got excited.

The really good news is that one of the boxes (a #10 business envelope box) is practically full of negatives. Back in 1977 my parents had a fire at their home and suffered lots of water and smoke damage. Many of their photos were lost, but in going through the mess, they managed to salvage the negatives of many of the photos. That's one of the boxes that mom found. There are numerous photos in it I've never seen before.

As I looked through the negatives last night I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. The photos are a treasure trove of special moments captured forever by the lens of a camera.This morning I woke up thinking about how excited I was to discover these photos. In my quiet time I was reminded how God is outside of time and can see the future, past and present all at the same time. Even now God can see my parents as children and relatives of mine now long passed. God can see my teenaged dad as he shipped out for the battlefields of France in 1944. God can see mom and dad getting married in the parsonage of a little Baptist church years ago. God can see my sister, brother and me being born into our family and all the places we lived. God can see the night I met Donna at an FCA meeting in the 10th grade, and he can see my children being born.

Best of all, when God sees these things he delights in them. I believe God gets just as excited about all the images he sees of us as I did when I first saw the previously unseen photos in that box. That's what the Bible says. In Zephaniah 3:17 the word says, "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

Friends, that's great news for today - God delights in you. Even with all our flaws and imperfections, God sees us and he delights in us. Keep that thought in mind as you go through this week. And know that God is watching over you now - and smiling.