Happy

This World's happiness is a feeling. It is quick silver. It is a mercurial emotion in motion.  It is a moving target.  It is like an ethereal vapor or hologram you cannot grasp. Everyone wants to be happy.  We sing “Happy Birthday to You.”  Careful, Happiness, as an emotional high, is as dangerous as any chemical opioid dependence. It’s a high tide of endorphins. The jagged rocks are still there beneath the surface, only hidden. In nature, and in human nature, waters ebb. But wait, is not the pursuit of Happiness written into our nation’s constitution? Is it not an unalienable right endowed by our Creator? Real happiness is not a right, its the result of being right with God.

I often tell people I am the happiest person I know. And why not? I am saved, safe, secure in Christ, and centered in God’s love. I’m a survivor off the sinking Titanic of self.  Jesus Christ is the Sun of my solar system. If Happiness is a “high” I found it on the elevated slopes of the Sermon on the Mount. That is as high as we need to go. If that sounds Greek to you, (it is). “Makarios” means “fortunate,” and "Blessed." So “Blessed” are the poor in spirit means “Happy” are the poor in spirit.  It is a spiritual happiness from above. Finding and doing God’s will, somehow attracts happiness like humming birds to sweet water. The unsaved search for it in every hell hole and under every rock. Like Big Foot or Sasquatch, it’s a figment of their imagination. They look for it in marriage, or money, or in managing or marginalizing others. Happiness is not the product, it’s the by-product just as gold is not the goal in heaven but what they use to pave the streets. I can’t make you happy. I can’t even make me happy. Knowing God’s will and setting out to do it is the secret of happiness. Speaking of God’s Word, Jesus said, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” I am never happier than when I am enjoying God’s Grace which is God working in me (and you) both to will and to do His good pleasure.”    -id