It has been awhile since my last writing. I have been monitoring the news, events, and trends on an ongoing basis — for those trends and phenomena that we have highlighted, our analysis and arguments have only been confirmed time and again. Our world continues to be overflowing with the signs of the prophecies of Revelation.
If you would indulge me, a thought on a different idea.
Happiness
I was having a nice conversation with a good friend, and they asked “What makes you happy?”. That really threw me. I suppose I always had to work very hard to attain what I wanted in my education and career, so the thought of “happiness” seemed such a luxury. I wanted to attain success in my career (and pocket book) — so progress on that front kept me content. Now, when I give that question more thought, about why the question was so foreign to me, my mind turns to the scriptures.
In the gospels, Jesus does not talk about, let alone promise us “happiness”. Though we all want to be happy, it seems to be a fairly self-centric notion. Jesus wants us to be more focus on serving God and showing our love for others. We are promised joy by following Jesus’s commandments, the most important being to love others as Jesus does. In following Christ, we are promised joy and peace, and for me, that is a pretty good deal. I am no saint, and I am still motivated by my own pursuit of my happiness. Perhaps Christ is referring to this when He tells us to put away “childish” things. When we pursue our own happiness, perhaps we are behaving like a 2 year old. When our favorite toy is taken from us, we cry and fall into despair. Our entire focus is on holding that toy. As an adult, we see how really unimportant that toy is in the grander scheme of life. Hopefully God will help us put away our love of toys, in favor of more spiritually mature goals. Perhaps something to ask God to help with.