“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:11)
I would ask you to contemplate something in this verse, when King David wrote those last nine words, “at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore,” what did he mean, for if we think about those pleasures, we may have an entirely different concept of them than he did. We live in an age of technology, simply flip a switch and all manner of wonders are available to us, in the days that David lived there wasn’t even running water as we know it, to travel 100 miles was an extremely long trip, we can do so in mere hours.
I don’t think those words mean what many of us think they do, I think we make them personal, when they may not mean that at all.
Would the people of that time call it a pleasure to be able to just toss their clothes in the washing machine, while we might consider it pleasurable to never need to wash them again. I believe the pleasures may be referring to something entirely different, what we see as pleasurable may not be what is waiting for us at all, at least not in the way we may be envisioning it.
Is it pleasurable to you to praise the Most High, for we will be doing much of that. Do you find pleasure in studying His Word, for I do not believe that we will have the entire Word of God memorized the moment we are glorified. What about serving Christ, do you find great joy and pleasure in what He has called you to do? These pleasures forevermore may mean the wonder of taking a few thousand years to visit perhaps less than one percent of His creation, but our pleasure will be in giving glory and honor to the Almighty, of seeing the Lord Jesus Christ face to face, of actually sitting at the feet of the Holy Spirit and learning even more about the Almighty.
And these pleasures will never end, they will never grow old, we will always relish in them.
“It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lam. 3:22-23)
My lovely wife and I, when we still had the opportunities to take vacations, enjoyed something you may not understand, but to us it was a great pleasure. We would go to one of the largest supermarkets where we were vacationing the first day, and spend two, sometimes three hours simply walking through the aisles and admiring all the new and various items we had never seen before. One of the pleasures we imagine in heaven, or perhaps the New Jerusalem, are those types of stores, eternal rows of delectable items, all to test, taste and enjoy. Food would be considered something that the people of King David’s time and ours would have in common, those pleasures forevermore.
It is enjoyable to contemplate the eternal, those pleasures never ending that await us, but it is also wise to keep them in perspective. “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) It sounds as if the Almighty enjoys giving us pleasures eternally as much as we will enjoy them forevermore.
The prize is Christ, the greatest pleasure will be to be in His presence, but there is more, more than we can ever imagine. But I think it is a good idea to do so, it offers us another pleasure, the knowledge that it will never end, that for all eternity we will be with the Lord. “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Cor. 2:9)
