Reasonably Happy

I wonder how happy "reasonably happy" is.

There are times when I am so happy I feel like I am about to explode.  Then there are times when I am so sad and hurt and angry that I feel like my sobs will turn me inside out.  There are times when the two extremes happen in the same day.  And happiness is so elusive and fleeting, while sadness lingers.  How is this reasonable?

Then I wonder if happiness is even what this is about at all, this thing we call life.

Don't get me wrong.  I think we can be happy.  I think happiness is a gift from God.  The Teacher said as much:  "Then I realised that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labour under the sun during the few days of life God has given him-- for this is his lot.  Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is a gift of God."  I don't think the lot of a follower of Jesus Christ is all doom and gloom and misery.

But neither is it all light and sparkles and happiness.

There is a time to be born, to plant, to build up, to gather, to heal, to embrace, to make peace, to laugh, to dance.  But there is also a time to die, to uproot, to tear down, to scatter, to kill, to refrain from embracing, to make war, to weep, to mourn.

And God is God in all of it.  "He has made everything beautiful in its time."  Which means that death, uprooting, tearing down, scattering, killing, standing alone, even war, weeping, and mourning are beautiful -- in their time.  I find that hard to swallow.

But the longer I live, the more I watch the people I love experience the ups and downs of "everything . . . in its time", the more I listen to people talking about how "Jesus will solve all your problems, and will make your life better," the more I become convinced that the pursuit of happiness is a useless endeavour.  Maybe even an ungodly endeavour.  I think that our society has made happiness a god.  And I get sucked into that.  When I'm in one of those moments where I've got more tears than kleenex, I doubt his goodness.  When things are going well, and he answers my prayers, then I get excited.  He loves me.  He loves me not.  He loves me.  He loves me not.  Based on what?  Based on how happy I'm feeling.  After all, I'm pretty sure that he wants me to be reasonably happy.  And when I start thinking that I've been more sad than happy, well, that's not reasonable.  Happiness becomes the scale by which I measure God's love for me.

There is something profoundly flawed about that thinking.

Because God is God in all of it.

Laura Story has an incredible song called "Blessings".  In it, she asks, "What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near?"  (If you haven't heard this song, stop right now, and listen to it here.)  What if?  What if the disappointments, the long silences from heaven, the dark nights of the soul are the very things God uses to draw me near to him?  Are they worth it?  Or am I, in my frantic quest for happiness, going to reject what God has made beautiful in its time, and miss out on a deeper, more profound relationship with him?

The Westminster Confession says.  "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."  My chief end is not to be happy.  My chief end is to glorify God.  To glorify him in life and in death, in planting and in uprooting, in gathering and scattering, in healing and in killing, in embracing and in times when I stand alone, in peace and in war, in laughter and in weeping, in dancing and in mourning.  That needs to be my focus.

When I focus on finding happiness, I become miserable, and God is not glorified.

But what if I lay aside my longing for happiness and, instead, focus on glorifying the God who makes everything beautiful in its time, even when it all feels ugly and horrible to me?  Not because he's going to end my suffering and get me out of this mess and make my life easier -- he might do that, but he might not -- but because he is worthy.  What if? 

"The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

When I focus on glorifying God, I begin to enjoy him.
And that makes me happy.
Even when I'm crying.