June 4, 2010

• Happiness

  End-of-school-year reflections are coming. I'm still turning things over in my mind. 

  God's grace is a funny thing. And really, it doesn't make sense. And yet it makes perfect sense. It truly fascinates me how His love reaches down to the deepest of depths to pull out His own.  And it's ever the more fascinating as it happens to me. 

  Not too long ago, a movie came out with the title, "What Women Want." Basically, the premise (I'm not even going to warn you of the spoiler, since the movie's plot already reveals it) is that women want men who can read their minds. I beg to differ. The truth is, women want the same things that men want. The same thing humanity has wanted since they have been cut off from the fountain of life itself: happiness.  

  What prompted the Founding Fathers of this country to draft into the very papers that define it that all men have the right to pursue happiness?  Why was this emotional element deemed important enough to finish a list that includes life and liberty?  It seems like such a silly thing.  Who needs happiness when you've got wealth and power and fame and everything else?  

  Because without happiness, none of that means anything.

  Happiness, along with love, seems to be out of the realm of possibility for the father of lies.  Like the look-alike of lust, fleeting pleasures can never replace the feeling of true happiness and contentment. The passing joy of seeing a parabola is nothing compared to knowing that I am right with God.

  Sorry excuse to throw in a parabola picture. It's so interesting how things like math and science just work.  Even in silly things like water spouts and bubble gum bubbles.  God is truly, to understate it, a genius.  And it's all so effortless.  And it all works together harmoniously.    

  In the Greek, the word that is used for "blessed" (as in the beatitudes, blessed are the meek, if you need a reminder) is the same word for "happy."  For all practical purposes, one can substitute "blessed" for "happy" and get what the Greeks understood as a blessing from providence: happiness.  Isn't that crazy?  Maybe not.  Maybe it's just me that thinks that a God who gives happiness as a gift is so much more awesome than a God who gives raisins or protection from thunder bolts.  Perhaps He's that much greater because He does all of that other stuff too.  

  And yet we fall.  Badly.

  In front of the entire watching Universe. 

  Sometimes I wonder what goes on in our brains when we do something we know we shouldn't.  It's like the safety valve pops off the pre-frontal cortex and all hell breaks loose up there.  Speech control, anger management, you name it, seems to be nonexistent as if they had run screaming out of a smoky house. Some days it's easier to ask them to come back (or never leave) than others. 

  Back to happiness. 

  Don't you want to be happy? Don't we all? Why then, do we trade it for something that doesn't satisfy but for a moment? Verbal stabs, backbiting, sensual pleasures, violence...  where does it all get us?  

  Igmar Berman has an allegory in which a professor is accused by a judge of being "guilty of guilt."  If there were a law, we could be measured by it, forgiven, or at least pay the penalty. But in a world without God, we only have guilt. Those of us who don't are called sociopaths. Guilt and the fabric of morality is woven into our characters. And without God, where do we find relief? How does one get free from being guilty of guilt?  

  

  But if God be for us, who can be against us? 

  It's way past my bedtime, and I kind of forgot what I wanted to cap this off with. But I do know that if happiness is a blessing from God, much of it comes from turning from the lies of the one who has been a liar "from the beginning."  And that guy has had an awful amount of practice at tricking us into believing otherwise. And our poor bodies and brains are in no shape to stand up against him ourselves. 

  But in the end, no matter how much we fall, God's strong arm of grace lifts us up.  

  This is happiness.  To be forever in God's hands. 

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Do you think Jesus said that we must become "like a little child" because little children are the best at being happy?  

  Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Psalm 32:1f

   

  • 12:12 am
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