I don’t want the email of 50 words summarized by AI. I don’t want to know my biological age. I don’t want the wearable telling me when I should be happy. I don’t want the Bluetooth toothbrush gamifying brushing my teeth. I don’t want my trash can to be “smart”. I don’t want my Air Fryer connected to WiFi. I don’t want an app for my coffee maker. I don’t want my refrigerator sending me push notifications.
Enough.
"You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words."
- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
The goal of education in each century.
1st century - The cultivation of virtue
5th century - The cultivation of virtue
14th century - The cultivation of virtue
19th century - The cultivation of virtue
21st century - College and Career Readiness 🤦♂️
I was talking recently with someone who is at the apex of his field globally, and he told me Psalm 37:4 carried him through a season of chaos and disappointment. I went back and studied not just the verse but the two that follow, and I haven’t been the same since.
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
It says DELIGHT. Not obey, not tolerate, not fear. Basically enjoy.
That word changes everything. God isn’t after robotic compliance. He wants to be the center of gravity in your inner world. Not a side interest. Not a Sunday ritual. The thing your mind returns to when everything goes quiet.
But here’s the tension: how do you actually enjoy God?
We enjoy the things we enjoy cos we understand them. You can’t enjoy football if you don’t understand the point of the game. You can’t love someone deeply if you don’t know who they actually are or what moves them. The same applies to God. You start by understanding who He is and why He exists.
God didn’t create us out of loneliness or need. He existed in perfect, self-sufficient love before time began. Creation was overflow, not deficit. Which means His desire for you is based on communion. His purpose is to unite the world to Himself because in Him is the only source of actual life.
When God becomes what delights you, something both subtle and seismic happens: your desires change. Whatever delights you shapes what you love and what you chase. Anyone who’s ever been in love knows this instinctively.
So when the Psalm says He will give you the desires of your heart, it’s not promising to grant your current cravings. It’s saying He rewrites your appetite entirely. He plants His own longings inside you, for truth, depth, holiness, courage, love and then fulfills what He Himself planted. God never fails to accomplish His own desires.
That’s why verse 5 feels so dangerous:
“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will bring it to pass.”
We recoil from that line cos we think surrender means erasure, as if God wants to override who we are. But why would a God who was already complete need to dominate us?
Everything about His nature points the opposite direction; toward overwhelming, self-giving love. He is more sufficient in Himself than a father without children, yet He sustains us more faithfully than any earthly father ever could.
Our desires are often small and short-sighted, like a child demanding candy instead of dreaming of a future. We insist we know what we want. We’re adults with full agency. But God is infinitely greater, infinitely wiser, not just as a father compared to a child, but as the eternal architect of reality compared to one of His creations. He knows what will actually make us whole.
Now look how the passage ends:
“He will bring forth your righteousness like the dawn, and your justice like the noonday sun.”
It doesn’t say His righteousness. It says yours. He will vindicate you, reveal the truth about who you are, and set things right.
The sequence is crisp and beautiful. God captures your heart, redirects your path, then restores your name. And He does it emphatically; like the noonday sun. You can’t miss it. You can’t ignore it. You can’t pretend it’s not there.
If you’re more angry that a handful of 22 year old software engineers are writing code to uncover fraudulent government spending than at the people who are fraudulently spending your hard earned taxes, it’s time to do some soul searching