The Hospitable Leader DevotionalExemplo

As Terry Smith says, quoting John Edwards, “A sight of God happifies.” Yesterday we spoke of how we get to participate in the glory of God, and for that reason, we should be happy and hopeful. However, a transformed and happy perspective does not always come easily; happy perspectives are developed. Recent neuropsychology has borne out the ability for our brain to literally rewire depending on what we focus on, for better or worse. And the more we focus on joyful, happy things, the more our baseline ability to be happy increases. It’s important to note that all of us have inborne baseline happiness levels, but that each of them can be adjusted. Once we do this, we can develop into the Christ-followers and hospitable leaders God intends us to be, as we go about our tasks with a contagious joy.

However, the question must still be asked of what we should focus on in order to increase happiness. Certainly, there are many positive things in life we can meditate on to become happier, such as the love of a friend, spouse, or parent, or beautiful works of art, and more. But there is something most fundamental to our lives that we should meditate on “day and night” that should be the source of all of our happiness, which we see in today’s passage.

King David, surely a consummate, though fallible, leader, most likely wrote Psalm 1 in order to reflect the key to a blessed life. Central to this passage is how blessed the one is who “delights in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” For David and the Israelites, the “law of the Lord” was the Mosaic Law that we find in early Scripture. Today, we no longer follow the Mosaic Law specifically (because the Mosaic Law was a temporary placement to “baby-sit” the Jewish people until the fullness, or purpose, of the law—Jesus—came to the world and revealed himself as the person to follow, to put it insufficiently but succinctly). However, the point of the law, Christ, is now fully available for us to focus on and delight in, and we can do so even more because his Holy Spirit dwells within us! When David was focusing on the law, he was delighting because he knew it would lead him to living the best life God had to offer him and the world. Similarly, when we meditate on Christ and his commands and precepts for us, we should delight (and not cower, as can be our want) in them day and night because it leads us to our best life!

As we mediate on Christ, who he is, and how we can participate in happily establishing his glory in this world, we literally imbed neurological patterns in our mind that shift our thinking. Rather than being critical, pessimistic, angry, or other negative thought-patterns, we can have patterns of “delight” because we intimately know Christ and his plans for this world, and how we can follow those plans.