Daily Reading for July 22 • St. Mary Magdalene

God’s beauty is not a pleasure reserved for great saints and card-carrying mystics, religious geniuses who speak in blank verse. The most tongue-tied, feet-on-the-ground believer is capable of getting a kick out of God—and needs to do so. The reason is simple: it is the very pleasure for which we are made. . . . Enjoying God is a trait of the species, like being a biped, no more technically complex than enjoying sunshine or wisteria. As with wisteria and sunshine, though, we must slow down enough to notice, so that the quiet but nonetheless thrilling “pleasantness of God” may sink into our chilled hearts, refresh our jaded eyes with a warmth and beauty that knows no season. The psalmist has given us a prayer that establishes the proper order for what we ask of God, if we are to remain strong in God’s service:

May the pleasantness of the LORD our God be upon us;
and the work of our hands, make it prosper for us;
the work of our hands, O prosper it. (Ps. 90:17)

First pleasure, then work. Pleasure for ourselves in God’s company, God’s beauty, and only then support for our work in God’s service.

From Getting Involved with God by Ellen F. Davis (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2001).