Happiness: Not Just For High Achievers

In election years, both sides make promises. They usually have to do with peace, prosperity and happiness. One side promises something for everyone, another promises law and order and justice for the wicked. I guess you’d call that pandering. 

Jesus didn’t pander. He promised blessings and divine approval on the poor and powerless in the Sermon on the Mount. He said the mournful would be comforted—obviously meaning those who mourn the effects of sin and suffering in people’s lives. He blessed the peacemaker, not the protestor or the sword-wielding conqueror on the white horse. (The only blessed sword-wielding conqueror on a white horse will be Jesus, in Revelation 19.)

Jesus pronounces happiness to the disadvantaged, to His disciples unjustly suffering in a brutal, secular world. He blessed the worshiper who approaches God with a sincere, pure heart.

It sounds paradoxical and absurd, but the truth is, one can in this way be happy and truly blessed, even when one is poor and powerless. When life is adverse and your plans don’t work out, you can rejoice, because God’s people who rely on Him have power and peace that the world cannot grasp.

I love those Country song lyrics that proclaim that “Happiness ain’t just for high achievers.” I had a friend who, struggling for breath and wracked with pain, laughed at the absurdity of life and smiled when his family and loved ones came near. Bob Harrison didn’t get what he wanted in life—in the end, Christ gave him much more.

God is great. When Mary contemplated her place in God’s plan of salvation, she exclaimed “He has filled the poor with good things, but has sent the rich empty away.” Luke 1:53. Take heart! The saying is true: happiness isn’t just for high achievers. Put your trust in God.