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?

A LITTLE LENIENCY ON MY BIRTHDAY

{Sorry this is a day late.  I meant for this to publish automatically yesterday on my birthday, but alas, my technology weakness is very
strong! Therefore, Happy Fourth!}

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.”  Psalm 68:19

T

here are Bible verses that warn us about adding to the scriptures, so I need to be very careful about how I say this.  And on top of that, the one I am about to add to was spoken by one of our spiritual super-men: no less than Job himself.  (I never can help giggling when people add that “himself” to people’s name:  it is such a surreptitiously subtle [and I say that knowing full well it is redundant] backdoor, cleverly cloaked manipulation of our slant toward that person; yea, that very person himself!)  Am I stalling here, or what?

            I just want to say that I know that what Job really said was, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Amen.  That was pretty much the end of that quote.  But could I ask your indulgence in allowing me to make a little unauthorized circle here, and stutter a little?  Would it be okay with you if I say, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and the Lord giveth.  Blessed be the name of the Lord”?

            This year has been… well, let me just say different for us. We have suffered some financial setbacks, had to close our family business, had to depend upon others for financial help,  sold our house and moved into a rent house; I have come out of retirement, and Larry has had, because of his age, to be trained to do a totally different line of work after over forty years as an accountant: driving a tanker over the road all over the USA and Canada. None of these changes have been tragic; we are in many ways enjoying the serendipitous adventure of it all!

  However, I would not only be a Pollyanna, but I would be a lying Pollyanna, if I said there hadn’t been some losses we have suffered along with the adventure we have gained.  We are together only four days every month, we don’t get to have each grandchild here in the summer to enjoy his/her own special vacation with Boss and Nana; and we aren’t taking family vacations anymore.  (Well, one of us is “vacationing “ three and half weeks every month, if you count looking out the window of a fourteen-wheeler as he whizzes past “Welcome to New York,”  “Welcome to Utah,”  “Welcome to Ontario, South Carolina, Louisiana, Quebec, Tennessee…” )

Having said that, let me hasten back to the reason I am risking being struck by lightning.  The Lord certainly does give, and He certainly does take away, but if we stop there, it makes it sound like the end of the story, and that’s just wrong!  Even in the book of Job, it is wrong.  That was not the end of his story.  “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before… The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first…After this Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.  And so he died, old and full of years” (Job 42:10, 12,16).  This sounds to me like the Lord did a lot more giving to Job after He had done that taking away.  

You see, it is my birthday.  Since I am an American, my birthday finds itself— every single year— strategically lodged up next to summer’s biggest bash-day.  There is every excuse in the world for folks to forget about my birthday in the rush of holiday preparations for barbecue and time on the water with family.  There is no end to the graciousness I could bestow upon that slip-up!  Not only that, but it also falls very near the first of a month, and I don’t know about you, but I always have trouble recognizing when a new month sneaks in upon the one I had gotten so used to for the past four weeks. So people have all kinds of reasons (not just excuses!) to forget about the day of my birth.  Good reasons!

But they don’t!  In fact, I am being fed meals by six different people— six separate occasions—

 for my birthday this year.  This is not even to mention all the gifts I have been given by these and others.  People just keep calling and asking to help me celebrate.  I am overwhelmed with the blessedness of this!  And this isn’t even a landmark birthday!  So much love!  So much honoring!  So little deserving!

Surely now you are thinking of how you, too, are sometimes just overwhelmed with unexpected blessings. I know you will have to agree with me that there is a lot more giving on the Lord’s part than taking away.  How can we ever believe the end of our story will end with the taking away when for all these years of our lives, there has always been some more giving after the taking away times? And when we start bemoaning our losses ( and yes, I know we have some losses that are REAL and shouldn’t be dismissed or diminished), shouldn’t we ask ourselves if really and truly, we aren’t way ahead?

I just can’t help thinking that even if it didn’t get recorded, Job is bound  to have said it my way at the end of his life.

HEAVEN LURES US

“So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.  But for Adam no suitable helper was found…Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.  The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…”  Genesis 2: 20, 23

                For those who have lived awhile, we know we’ll never find it, but still we keep searching for it everywhere. It comes in different forms.  Sometimes the vision is so defined it’s almost palpable:   the dream of a fairytale romance, the quest for the perfect friend, wanderlust that takes us over oceans and back, hunger and thirst for the nectar and ambrosia of the gods and goddesses.   Other times it is a nebulous thing that wafts its elusive scent before our nostrils and disappears into the ethereal as quickly as it came, but we keep remembering what it was like to catch a whiff of it.  We think maybe next time we will be quick enough to snatch it to ourselves and at last be satisfied.  But we never are, and what’s more, we never will be— at least not the “we” we are right now. You may object and hold out as proof that time you went to Switzerland or that steak you had at that new restaurant or that Christmas Eve it snowed ten inches.  Yes, there are times that our grasp does equal our reach and reality actually does exceed expectation, but do any of these times last?

                It seems that in the Garden, God made a point of parading all those animals He had made before Adam.  Since it was Adam’s responsibility to name them, He knew Adam would have to study each one carefully, and maybe that’s just why He gave him that job: so that Adam would recognize his need.  He would look at them all and realize that his need was not for any of these, but for something, actually someone higher. 

                And so now, we have paraded into our lives people and experiences that each seem to be an opportunity for us to ask the same question:  Could he be the One?  Could this be the Time?  Is this, at last, that Place?  But we are always eventually disappointed, and our need is highlighted.  We know we must be good sports about it and be thankful for what we have, but we know it isn’t ideal.  We had something Higher in mind, whether we talk about it or not. 

                This may sound bleak and fatalistic, but it isn’t meant to.  Actually, it is very good news.  Because we can desire it, it is there …somewhere.  Malcolm Muggeridge said, “Because of our physical hunger, we know there’s bread; because of our spiritual hunger, we know there is Christ.” ¹ The desiring and dreaming and hungering and thirsting are not accidents or a sign that we are just inherently hard to please (well, in a way we are, but we were meant to be). It is God telling us there is a fulfillment. He tells us that He is a jealous God, and rightly so, unlike us when we are jealous.  God knows until we love Him most, we will be settling for something other than life.

 Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”² That heavenly aroma is there to lure us to Him, to remind us of what is real, to whisper, or sometimes to shout, to each of us to follow our noses and soldier on.  What we are made for awaits us; we are in the process of readying ourselves for it.  It will take no less than a lifetime, but It will be worth every minute of it.

From Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel (2012 Pottery Press)

A FRESH LOOK BACKWARDS

“Get skillful and godly Wisdom, get understanding (discernment, comprehension, and interpretation)…” Proverbs 4:5 (The Amplified Bible) 

In the process of writing Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights, a frivolous, insignificant story based on just one year of my life as a child, I learned a great deal.  God imparted to me some of this understanding, discernment, comprehension, and interpretation that Solomon harps on over and over in Proverbs. 

Specifically, I learned to discern and interpret an awful lot about mercy and grace.  I’ve been taught all my life that mercy is not receiving the punishment we deserve, and grace is receiving the reward we don’t deserve.  I learned — by way of closely relooking at some old memories— that I have been and still am the recipient of both mercy and grace in huge ways, both quantitatively and qualitatively.  As a result, I have learned how important it is for me to give mercy and grace to others in my path who need them.

Maybe you need, as I did, to cast out some long-held childish notions about your parents—maybe still alive, maybe already dead; it matters not; it’s still important— and extend to them some mercy and grace.

I pray for you, as you journey back, that God will highlight for you new ways to see old events that will help you shatter some preconceived notions and let go of some long-held wrong conclusions that might have been disturbing your peace.

C.S. Lewis said, “We will never meet a mere mortal.”  This means that everyone we have ever spoken to, argued with, cherished, or despised, is an eternal soul with one of only two very different destinies.  Young, irritating, exasperating, out-of-control punks are headed somewhere forever.  There is an all-seeing, all-knowing Great Listener and Great Whisperer who keeps tossing out his trusty lariat in various ways and through sundry characters.  I think He’s hoping we will allow Him to deliver us out of our frightful tendency to bounce off one destructive fence into another one just as disastrous into His chute of safety and peace, a sound mind, and a good future. 

       

CARRY IT ON TO COMPLETION

                                                        WORKS IN PROGRESS
                                                              BELIZE- 2011

"...being confident in this: that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  Philippians 1:6

There is a series of scripture-song CD's I found a few years ago called SEEDS. ( I highly recommend them, by the way.  The catchy tunes and rhythms appeal to our limbic systems in a big way to help us remember the exact words to lots of scriptures we probably would otherwise have much more trouble remembering-- at least that's the case with me and those with whom I have shared them.) One of them features this partial verse from Philippians. Right now, it is stuck in my head.

 Most of the time, I say, "Don't rip something asunder from its context!" and would encourage looking at least at the whole sentence and probably more words preceding it than even its own sentence.  However, sometimes I like to take out a kernel and examine it for its own merit.  Sometimes leaving the shorter part in the longer whole diminishes it, waters it down somewhat, and makes it paler than it should be.

Since this little song has been repeating itself in my brain for a while, I decided to do some purposeful thinking about what might be new in it that I had missed. 

What had I always thought it meant?

What more might it mean?

I heard it, repeated it a lot, and staked claim to it fiercely through the months and years that I was composing my first book.  It said to me that I could get this thing done.  I could and would, with God's help,  finish, even though 365 days is a huge chunk of devotionals to write.  

But recently it hit me that even though I still believe it means to encourage us in this way, it also might mean something else worth thinking about-- especially in light of the last few words:  "...until the day of Christ Jesus." These are the words that caused me to relook and rethink.  I would love to be around when Jesus returns; I dream of what that would be like. Hearing the trumpet and the shout, maybe getting to see the dead in Christ out at the cemetery jump up out of their old graves and unite with Him in the air just prior to meeting them all there myself.  But I know that generations before me dreamed the same dream, and they perished from the earth without having that dream fulfilled.  I might very well too.  So... what could it mean if I don't get my dream fulfilled?  What if I don't last "until the day of Christ Jesus"?

  How do the words of this verse work in our lives if, indeed, we aren't destined to be here until the day of Christ Jesus?

What if the work He began in me is carried on to completion in the people I meet and influence or teach?  Maybe my children, then my grandchildren? Maybe the ladies I study with, and then the ones they, as a result, study with? The kids in your Sunday school class and their kids? Could this scripture be reminding us that what you and I do is not just for now?  It continues to be a work in progress, the domino effect of which we will not see and realize until we watch the video in Heaven. It might look like a little thing now, but its effect could be infinitesimal.  

And it makes you ponder backwards too: whose work in progress are you a part of that started a long time ago?

If this isn't something new or profound to you, I won't be disappointed or surprised.  It won't be the first time I have realized that I'm a slow learner.

May you be blessed with the encouragement that I have received from finally getting bonked on the head with a wider reality of an old idea.

BALANCING ACT

“Get skillful and godly Wisdom, get understanding (discernment, comprehension, and interpretation)…” Proverbs 4:5 (The Amplified Bible)

The Shelby County Sheriff Posse Rodeo was a big deal every year in my hometown of Center.  There was a well-orchestrated parade and the whole nine yards.  I remember as a very small child watching and hearing those snorting, stomping bucking broncs caged in and waiting on the edges of the arena.  A cowboy would climb on, and when they opened those chutes, a horse came ripping out kicking and convulsing and maniacally throwing himself into every manner of contortion trying to throw off his rider who was attempting to break him, to hold him down, and cramp his style.  This bucking bronc is perfect symbol of  me as a child.

Of course, I didn’t see myself that way at the time.  I didn’t consider that I was some wild, gyrating terror whom necessary riders were attempting and needing to tame.  I didn’t see myself as malicious or rebellious in any way.  I just thought I was having fun.  

Most who hear of my childhood antics register a shock upon their faces.  They don’t think that kind of a childhood is in character with the school-teaching, devotional-writing adult who would be married for 40 years to a quiet, mild-mannered fellow like my Larry. I suppose that’s because since those days I have been tamed considerably. But the truth is that there’s still some of that kid in here, doing some occasional snortin’ and floppin’ around inside the chute.  

We are told in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians that we are to be “transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to the next,” so as adults we must certainly put off the childish parts of our nature that might hinder that kind of growth.  But then, Jesus Himself warns us against losing certain aspects of a childlike nature. He goes so far as to say that unless we come as a child, we can “in no wise enter the kingdom of Heaven.” 

Hmmm.  What to do? How can we manage such a crucial balancing act?

I tried to summarize in poetry my struggle with this.

Ultimate Dilemma

I want to be pretty; I want to be plain.

I want to be a barefoot dancer in the rain.

But then again, on the other hand,

I’d rather be practical and wear brown wool,

Something that will make me invisible.

I want to write poetry, be romantic and lacy;

I want to break bottles, break rules and go crazy.

I want to be vivid: I want to be pale.

I wish to inspire; I’d like to regale.

I’d like to be nameless with a face to forget

Like a chameleon that blends in and graciously fits.

But oh, this desire to be a rebel in red—

Blazing through pinks with a chicken on her head!

Can you relate?  Do you look back at the kid version of yourself and compare it to the adult model?  If you haven’t lately, I really recommend that to you. Some of the weightiest and most enduring influences upon us emanate from some of the least predictable sources.  The message is often camouflaged by the blur of activity we are involved in; without good guidance, we can’t make sense of the seeming randomness of all that is happening.  We can’t find any logical pattern or common thread or recognize the key individuals who are placed strategically in our paths, especially in our youth, and thus, we will likely miss the big picture at the time.  But we are blessed to get more chances to recognize these messages as we travel concentrically past them by way of memory. Just because we missed the lessons of our youth when we were youthful doesn’t mean we can’t glean wisdom from them later and still benefit from them and be changed by them in significant ways.

Dedicate some time to tracing the steps that took you from there to here. Then ask yourself if you are appropriately grateful for the people and events that took you from there to here.  We can learn much about ourselves way down there as a child that viewed from these heights might make a lot more sense and give us a needed change of attitude and even a crucial change of heart. 

OUR DANGEROUS INFLUENCE

“Be self controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, standing firm in the faith because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering.”  1 Peter 5:8-9

          Just as the devil is like a dragon in his revenge, breathing fire and trying to burn to cinders our knowledge of God, he also prowls around stealthily trying to scare us with his fierce growls into paralysis for the same reason. The devil is out to destroy our knowledge of who God really is. 

Maybe he will try to convince us that God is not as powerful as he is so that we will give up on a lost cause and throw our energies behind his “winning team.”  After all, look at how the world is shaping up.  There is certainly a lot of evil out there, and good people are often victimized by it.  It doesn’t look like good will win out over evil; things just seem to be getting worse and worse. I went to a PG-13 movie last night believing it might be decent entertainment, but I was dead wrong.  All the definitions have changed.  What once indicated safety no longer can be trusted.  But the Bible says that God will not be mocked, and we know that all that is going on down here doesn’t get by the eyes of our all-seeing Father.  He is just, and one day everything will be made right.

Maybe the lion will roar that God is not as good as we thought He was or as attentive to our needs.  He will accuse Him of turning a blind eye to pain and injustice.  He will bring things to mind both afar and anear about how God is not doing His job in a very kind and loving way. He might argue that faith is not a strong enough cord to bind us to heaven, and anyway, who wants to be bound, period?

The revenge he wants can be found if he can destroy the strong faith it takes to make us the testimony that will turn the world from its evil ways. What the devil wants is strong ambassadors for the life lived with no God. He argues that we are slaves to an unkind or at least uncaring, or maybe just a weak, god. What he doesn’t roar about is that without our trust in our big God, we are not really free agents able to make our life the way we want it, the way it really ought to be; instead, we are really just a bunch of little gods who are all vying for our own way. No one ever wins, and there is never any freedom in this kind of living. There is war on every side from every other one of us competing for lordship.

But in the third chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul outlines for us why our thinking about and our belief in our good, almighty God is so crucial and so dangerous to our Adversary: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts known and read by everybody.  You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” ( 2Corinthians 3:2-3).

What we believe and how we live as a result is powerful in this fallen world. It screams, louder even that the roaring lion, that there is Hope!  There is more going on than what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears.  The devil knows that there is, but he doesn’t want us to know that.  We are the letters of proof to a watching and wondering world.  

 And we are not alone as we go about trying to live faithfully. As crucial as it is for Christians to be aware of the truth of the prowling lion, let us never forget that our faithful Father’s answer to all this prowling is His own far-reaching and ever-constant ranging eyes: “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.”  2 Chronicles 16:9.