Some people look for love in all the wrong places, and many of us look for happiness in many of the same places. Our American constitution says we have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the search for happiness, and most of us take that quest very seriously. The happiness that most of us find, however, slips through our fingers like finding sand, or for that matter, like weather.
What country! People still come from all corners of the world to claim their piece of the American Dream. Actually, there are many different dreams, aren’t there, but they are all motivated by the pursuit of happiness. And, because getting our piece of the pie seems to be what life in America is all about, we are bombarded with advertising by people who want to sell us happiness in a thousand different ways; from pills to ponies and from jewelry to jungle safaris. For the most part, we’re told that we need a few things to be happy, or that if we don’t get more of whatever it is they’re promoting, we’ll be “losers.”
These happiness hucksters always remind me of the following quotes:
1. “Life is but a walking shadow, a poor actor who struts and worries about his time on the stage and then hears no more. It’s a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury.” , which means nothing.” (Macbeth – Act 5, Scene 5).
2. “Nonsense! Nonsense! says the Master. Absolutely nonsense! Everything is nonsense.” And again: “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye is never satisfied with seeing nor the ear tired of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.” do; there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:2, 8-9).
This is quite an enigma, isn’t it? We think that certain things or certain people will make us happy, and surely they often give us at least a momentary joy, but it is fleeting; Like the morning dew, or the feeling of that first kiss. This is why many people get so tired of the rat race and so angry with the human race that they decide to opt out.
Let me suggest that the largest percentage of us have been looking for happiness in all the wrong places. After spending a lot of time and lots of money trying to find and buy what we thought would make us happy, we found out that moths ate it, or rust got on it, or thieves stole it, or we just outgrew it. tired of it, whatever it is. We end up storing our happiness in the attic, in our garages, in rental spaces, or selling it at yard sales. Then we start looking for something, or someone new, to make us happy again.
Happiness, of course, does not live in any of those places and no one has the right to try to sell us happiness any more than they can sell us a piece of the moon, because happiness that never leaves or disappoints us cannot. It does not spoil or rust, it does not age or become obsolete, it is the reward of being in communion with Jesus Christ. We’ll talk more about what happiness looks like in future articles, but for now, let’s just “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2).
