Devotional 3-13-11

Happiness is…

Please read Psalm 32

Happiness is…

• A warm blanket.
• Finding a Pencil.
• Learning to Whistle.
• Tying your shoe for the very first time.
• Playing the drum in your church’s praise band.
• Two kinds of ice cream.
• Knowing a secret.
• Catching a butterfly; and setting him free.
• Having a sister.
• Sharing a sandwich.

You can probably identify with one or more of the preceding definitions of happiness, and you can think of many other ways to fill in the blank. These particular examples were shared by the late Charles Schultz’s Peanuts characters. Just like Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Schroeder, happiness is high on our list of priorities. Our longing for happiness drives much of our lives. I imagine that if each of us surveyed our lives, we would see that we pursue careers, choose hobbies, wear clothes, buy homes and even enter into lasting relationships on the basis of what brings us happiness.

John Lennon, the Beatle, said, “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

Our entire lives are lived, to a certain extent, in such a way as to answer the question, “what will make me happy?”

Today’s Psalm provides insight into true happiness. It doesn’t come from achieving fame and fortune. It doesn’t come from wearing the sharpest clothes, having the latest, fastest, most advanced phone/mp3/computer reader device. It doesn’t come from finally getting the dream home or the sports car.

No, true happiness comes from consistently hitting a golf ball 275 yards straight down the middle of the fairway. Just kidding. Even that kind of happiness is fleeting and momentary.

The psalmist instructs that being happy is a matter of being righteous. At first, that sounds daunting. After all, who among us is righteous? Don’t be discouraged. Righteousness, according to the psalmist, is not about being sinless, but about acknowledging sin and accepting God’s forgiveness. Put another way, happiness is…being forgiven.

In many ways, Lent is a time when we can practice walking a journey from grief and despair to confessing our sin and accepting forgiveness, and into the joy and happiness of new life that is the promise of Easter.

They say money cannot buy happiness. So true. It’s already been purchased for you.

Jeff Taylor