Happiness

This is for a special friend and for special people everywhere.

I would be happy if….. I could win the Lottery.  I would be happy if…… I found the perfect husband  …… if I had a child ……  if I had a perfect body ……  if I could go on a World cruise …..  if I had a different job.  

We all have dreams of things that would bring us true happiness but happiness is rather like the end of the rainbow.  You cannot capture it to keep. 

Happiness can be found in unexpected places and needs to be looked for.  I believe that we can sometimes be happy without recognising it.   If our idea of happiness is always waking up on top of the world, always feeling cheerful, never being ill, having enough money for the things we want, then we are unlikely to find it.  As we find little bits here and there in everyday things we begin to realise how much of it there really is to be found.

First of all – think of the person who is terminally ill who would be very happy to have our aches and pains,  the friendless person who would be very happy to have someone with whom they could have a row with occasionally,  the starving person who would be very happy to have to wash the dirty pots yet again,  the displaced person who would be very happy with clothes which didn’t fit anymore and were so last year. 

Secondly – we can give away happiness without having it ourselves.  In fact we are very likely to find it for ourselves when we have given it away.   I get pleasure and happiness from singing in the church choir as a result of the time and effort put in by others who conduct and accompany.  But I wonder how often the conductor thinks of the happiness they are giving to others during the rehearsal.  Only recently I was helping a friend putting the finishing touches to a craft project which the children had done and spent a very happy hour with glue gun and pipe cleaners.  As it happens the entry won first prize in a competition for the children.    This made me even more happy – not because the project was anything to do with me but because I had helped to make the children happy.  All I did was lend a pair of hands and a bit of encouragement but I thoroughly enjoyed doing it with my friend.

I have always had difficulty with the idea that Christians should always be happy.   If a person has just suffered a bereavement then sadness is a right a proper emotion or if a person is experiencing great pain then it is difficult to see how they could feel happy.  But the things which a Christian can have, and we can be given these through prayer, are peace of mind and contentment.  These are things which we can find and keep and no-one can take them from us.

May the Peace of God which passes all understanding be with you all, now and evermore.