I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing things, believing I’ll be happier once I reach some distant goal. The weekend will be here, and Christmas is coming, vacation time will be here in a few weeks. I’ll get that job, or earn a promotion then I’ll be happy.
And yet, once I reached those goals I’ve been chasing after, I kept discovering that those things didn’t satisfy me, and began chasing again. The more I tried to be happy the more it eluded me.
What if being happy is like trying to pull yourself out of a tight space? What if trying harder only dooms us to failure? What is the pursuit of happiness will never actually make us happy?
In America, we are accustomed to believing that “the pursuit of happiness” is a good thing. According to Thomas Jefferson, it’s one of the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator, and the Declaration of Independence guarantees that we’ll be allowed to keep pursuing happiness as long as we live. Our traditions and our society are built on the assumption that the path to flourishing as human beings is found by trying to flourish.
I think the way America is today, they are trying anything they can to take these away from us and turn us into a people relying on them so feed us, and our health care all we have to do is give them all our property, out hard earned money, our guns. The most terrifying words to most Americans is “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The truth is nothing is ever free, it only comes from hard work.
But I also think we need to admit that the pursuit of happiness is a rigged game against us. No amount of possessions will ever make us happy. Happiness had to come from within.
Happiness is hiding in places where we least expect it. It’s hiding in our costly obedience to the King of the universe, even in the midst of our mourning. It’s hiding in the meaning and purpose we discover when we give ourselves to loving God and loving others. We flourish when we are focused on living a life of love and forget to think about our own flourishing. Happiness is found in a life that is not lived only about serving ourselves.
In Psalm 37:4 David says,
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
We were not designed to chase after our own desires. We weren’t designed to pursue happiness. We were to pursue God, to spend our lives loving and serving others and to find along the way we’ve become happy without even trying.
I saw a meme the other day about a man holding 10 umbrellas, and a man with no umbrella standing in the rain. How many times do we see people go without but we are too busy or snobby to bring them a sandwich or a blanket, or give them an extra jacket?
From Pity to Praise 