The Mischievous Delight of God

For the last week or so I’ve been thinking about transitions, about that inexorable movement from A to B, B to C, C to D… It’s been on my mind because I’ve just recently made one of the most important transitions in all of life: I graduated from college.

This transition was a little longer than the norm; though I walked the platform during Commencement exercises, it was not a moment of completion. I still had a three credit hour course hanging over my head, to be completed online. I did so within eight days. The purgatorial feeling of this transition, the never-ending-ness of it, was strange.

Now, that transition behind me, I am flying across the country to witness another important transition: my best friend is getting married. Though it is not my transition, I do feel that it is important for me, watching my friends get married.

All of these transitions remind me, over and over again, that I’ve grown up. This summer I’m starting my first-ever full-time job; it’s a ministry position, no less. This summer, I’ll make a transition I’ve dreamed of for most of my life: the transition into published authorship. This summer I’m transitioning into graduate studies. This summer I am transitioning into an increasingly important and significant relationship.

I ride these transitions like a blowing leaf on the wind–I am never motionless for long as a tumble along, blowing from one moment of significance to another. Tolkien penned a lovely little poem,

The road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the road has gone

And I must follow if I can

God’s eagerness to bless is often hard to keep up with; He is often about the business of surprising us with HIs blessings. Paul would say that He does “far more abundantly than all we ask or think,” (Eph. 3:17). God, I think, practices mischief of the best kind–not to harm, but to flourish; not to deceive, but to delight.

What else do you call grace, but mischievous delight? What do you call mercy on sinners but the greatest of folly? What else do you call blessing on the cursed but divine guile?

It is in this mischievous delight that marks my life, which is the controlling narrative to my life, especially this summer. It is by grace–by mischievous delight–that I am who I am, that I do what I do. It is in this that good Christian men rejoice.