Hope and Delight - Delight Radar Day 1

Jul 13, 2025

We have come to the final week of sharings from

in their “Hope Portal.” This week, it is a brief snippet of a conversation with the essayist and writer, Ross Gay. He is the author of several books, only one of which I have read which was Inciting Joy. I had forgotten he had a book that followed called The Book of Delights. You can find the episode conversation here. Krista begins the episode with this about the connection between joy, delight, and hope.

I have heard, in the last few years, a question rolling around the world. It goes something like this: “How could you be joyful in a moment like this, in a world like this?” And the question troubles me because it suggests that joy is a privilege. But joy in human life is a resilience-making, life-giving birthright of being human. And to suggest that you can’t be joyful in a time like this is akin to the idea that you can’t be hopeful unless everything has gone right for you. Joy is a companion to hope as a wellspring of resilience.

These few sentences get to the heart of all three of these beautiful concepts - delight, joy, and hope. If they only depend on the actual events taking place, then we’re in trouble. But if they are those things that help to live with resilience through such times, then there’s some power in them. I have personally experienced this with all of these ideas but I’d add a fourth in there - gratitude. I’ve shared about that many times elsewhere here. But back to delight.

In the conversation (which again, I cannot recommend highly enough), Ross shares of how he was led to spend a year working on his “delight radar.” He chose to be very intentional about noticing and writing about the things that brought delight to his life. I purchased the book right after listening to the podcast and here’s something he writes in the introduction.

It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.1

But he also notes that it didn’t magically make his life perfect. He writes:

...I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight.2

Well over 100 times, the word delight (or variations) show up in the scriptures, but notably in the Psalms. Psalm 1 - their delight is in the law of the Lord. Psalm 37 - Take delight in the Lord. Psalm 40 - I delight to do your will. Psalm 119 is full of delight...over and over. And there are many places as well that speak of God’s delight in us!

Ross ends his introduction with this that inspires what I am going to do this week.

I also learned this year that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it.3

So, this week, I’m going to be working on my delight radar and sharing those delights. Word of warning - this week will probably be a week where there will be a post pretty much daily. But it won’t be as much writing but just photographs. So, my apologies in advance for “clogging” your inbox.

I’d love to hear and see your delights that you receive this week. Can you turn on your delight radar as well both for yourself but also to share with others?

My guess is that after this week, I may take a short break from sharing - a bit of a summer step-back if you will. So, with that, here are the delights I saw on Saturday but starting with one from a few days ago that I keep going back to and then the Saturday ones.