• "Happiness is a habit. Cultivate it." - Elbert Hubbard
• "Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour." - Walt Whitman
• "Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved." - Victor Hugo
• "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true." - Richard Bach
• "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." - Mother Teresa
• "A friend is a gift you give yourself." - Robert Louis Stevenson
• "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." - James M. Barrie
• "Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul and the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."
• "Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin
• "Happiness is not having what you want. It's wanting what you have." - Author Unknown
• "Often the greatest enemy of present happiness is past happiness too well remembered." - Oscar Hammling

Be Happy!

Tom Barnard

olomon was not only a man of many wives (he had about 700 of them), but he was also a man of many words. In that regard, he was very much like his father, David the King. Solomon wrote the thirty-one chapters of the Book of Proverbs, and one of the topics he discussed was happiness.

“And so, my children, listen to me, for happy are all who follow my ways.”

(Proverbs 8:32, 33 NLT)

Solomon was not speaking about himself. He was speaking about “Wisdom,” but he was giving voice to the mind of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord was saying, through Solomon, “Happy are all who follow my ways.” That sounds like a promise from God, doesn’t it? And it is present tense. It is not past tense, because we can’t change that. The Lord was saying, “Listen to me and follow my ways, and you will be happy.” Call it “blessed” if you like. It means the same thing—Be happy!

We are creatures of “today,” but we are affected by things past and things we hope will take place in the future. The past bothers us because we can’t change it; the future bothers us because we can’t control it. The past has memories; the future has uncertainties. And if we dwell too much in the past or worry too much about the future, we can be paralyzed in what we do today.

Henri Nowen understood our dilemma. Here are some of his thoughts on the subject:

“The real enemies of our life are the ‘oughts’ and the ‘ifs.’ They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. God is the God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful or painful.”

Can we find real happiness in this life? Can we find comfort in who we are and what we do? Of course. But there are conditions to be met. Solomon continued by saying,

“Happy are those who listen to me, watching for me daily at my gates,

waiting for me outside my home! For whoever finds me finds life….”

(Proverbs 8:34)

Helen Keller, blind and deaf for most of her life, once said: “Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.” She was only 19 months old when she became very ill with what some later believed to have been caused by scarlet fever or meningitis. When her irreversible condition was discovered, her parents were advised to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind in South Boston. The school assigned Anne Sullivan, a visually-impaired woman of 20, to become Helen’s personal teacher. Eventually Helen learned to speak and read through touching the lips and throat of others as they spoke. Later she mastered the Braille system and eventually used it to learn French, German, Greek, and Latin. At age 20, Helen gained admittance to Radcliffe College near Boston. In 1904, at the age of 24, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude. When her journey became her goal, she found fulfillment and happiness.

Happiness is not a destination. It is a journey. Samuel Johnson put it this way: “Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” And whom you travel with is far more important than where you travel to. Let me pray with you.

Heavenly Father, everyone wants happiness in life. But few find it, because everyone is looking for an end result now, rather than a journey to get there. Open my eyes to the truth here. Lift the darkness of my vision and show me the way to go. Shed light on the decisions I must make today. Keep me focused on You and Your will for my life. In the strong name of your Son I pray. Amen.