BROKEN JAR:

BROKEN JAR:
365 DAYS ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS


            For some reason, I seem to fall accidentally into themes in my reading.  I don’t ever think I am seeking out similar-themed books, but time and time again, I find myself traveling along parallel literary pathways even though I am usually involved in a combination of fiction and nonfiction. 
            (As I write this, I am wondering if I have this right.  Am I really accidentally picking up books that just coincidentally carry similar themes? Could there be some Providence working in my choosing so that I will be fed, by hook or crook, a healthy dose of whatever it is I am needing to learn right now?  Or perhaps neither of these is exactly the truth.  Maybe truly I choose freely my books, as I do every day the clothes from my closet, without the finger of God really being involved at all in my choice.  In fact, it might be that someone else reading these same books might not even notice the congruency in lessons that catches my eye, captures my mind, and eventually moves my heart to accept and be changed by the double- or triple- or quadruple-pronged lesson. ) All of that was put into parentheses because it’s not the point I set out to make, just a stream of consciousness intrusion that so often happens when I set out to tell any kind of a story.  Maybe we will get back to this stream later, but if I deal with that now, I will forget what I wanted to say to start with. 
            Lately, everything I read is prodding me to reevaluate what living a happy, fulfilled life of peace in the Lord means, according to Him, the Lord.  Do I have it right?  Am I pursuing the kind of life that God will bless with His peace and His joy, or have I slipped into the postmodern way of thinking about the pursuit of happiness. Of course I know that the blessedness of the beatitudes isn’t the same thing that most would define as sheer, crazy, out-of-this-world, wild bliss.  I know that, even though some versions do substitute the word “happy” for “blessed,” that kind of happiness that comes from being persecuted for righteousness’ sake is something that must grow on us, or rather that we must grow into; I don’t think Jesus is trying to convince us that the joy from that sort of thing would immediately feel like happiness or even joy, since joy seems to be something less superficial.  I believe He is promising us something that will usher us into the place we need to be to experience the strong, durable, lasting peace and joy that is above circumstance.  I remember learning all this as a much younger Christian, and I think I have maintained my awareness of this truth.  I think I have.
            But as I read these books that strongly call me out from inside myself and into others, I am reminded that that what Christians from earlier generations, and even the Founding Fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence, meant by the “pursuit of  happiness” was something much different from what today’s American society, even Christians, think of as happiness. 
            It seems like what Americans wanted a guaranteed right to pursue was not a life of self-centeredness and constant pampering, but a life of purposeful living.  If we listen to our parents and grandparents talk about their lives forty or fifty years ago, when they describe good memories of happiness and joy, they don’t talk so much about high-priced vacations (vacating) as much as they talk about interacting and throwing themselves all together into purposeful experiences that brought relief and even rescue to their community.
            And I’m a little worried because I know a lot about fun.  I have learned a whole lot about having fun that, honestly, I just wish I could somehow unlearn.  I’m talking about the easy, immediate, thrilling kind of fun that is bought with money and concerns the stomach in one way or another: sometimes it’s the butterflies that flit around in there at the thought of a rip-roaring good time of recreation, and sometimes it’s the vast array of festive food that will overfill me. All this has me concerned.  I’m pretty sure I’m slipping into that dangerous, wide highway that defines happiness as something we chase after for its own sake.
            Happiness was never meant to be chased after as our one goal.  Single-minded, goal-oriented people who enter into this kind of a quest will end up doing whatever it takes to get some.  And then some more the next day.  And then, it becomes the normal expectation of every one of our days. And this kind of thing can easily become what happens, even to Christians, if we don’t discipline ourselves to prayerfully answer some important questions about how we define happiness and joy and peace as compared to how Jesus defined it. 
            If we allow ourselves the luxury of getting on a quest like this, we usually find that once we have figured out what does it for us, it is just so much easier to get it when a lot of other people aren’t involved.  After all, what if they have their own idea of happiness and it clashes with ours?  And so, often we end up pursuing happiness in isolation or with just a few, who have the good taste and judgment to define happiness like we do.  As I study the Word, this just doesn’t seem to be what Jesus had in mind for us.  He had a different kind of happiness that involved purposeful living, giving and taking, not taking and taking some more, bringing shalom into the world around us that would otherwise be doomed to chaos.  That’s the way Jesus set out to live every day He got up; that was the example He set for us: to take the risk of involving ourselves with others who might hinder our fun until finally we learn that the only kind of happiness worth having is the kind you can only find when you take it off the bullseye where it never belonged.
            Maybe you are scratching your head about me right now and wondering why I am wasting the time of both of us stating the obvious here. Maybe you are so far down the road that this is child’s play to you.  I thought I was, but now I think I’m not.  I think I have fallen into some lazy thinking and have allowed myself to get caught up in the pursuit of the wrong kind of happiness. I think that I almost forgot that this is a world easily defined and limited by gravity, both physically and spiritually, and at least for the span of eighty or ninety years, I am going to have to fight against it in a conscious way.
 I am praying now that I will give God the chance to work with me and use me in some serendipitous ways instead of taking the reins out of His hands and heading off to do my thing every morning after my devotional time.

P.S.  Okay, maybe I didn’t choose the books like I chose my clothes. You probably knew I would eventually figure it out, huh?


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