A Perspective on Happy

It would seem that in our society people are on a rampant search for happiness.  And we seek a thousand different ways to make ourselves happy.  But are we succeeding?  It doesn’t appear so.  No matter how we search or what we buy, happiness seems to be short-lived and continually elusive.  We search and search, we buy and buy, and try and try, but at the end of it all, we are just as miserable as when we started.  How do we gain the adventure-filled life.  How do we go beyond mere existence into joy?  How do we find passion and color in a world that is full of shades of gray?

In this day and age, it would seem that the end result that people want out of life is to just be happy.  And we throw those two words around like we can somehow manufacture them or buy them.  We take our hard-earned money and we spend it on things that are exciting, or things that we think will help us in that elusive search.  We buy cars, or boats, or planes or new houses, or any number of things, thinking…if I could just get my hands on that, then I would be happy.

It starts young and continues all the way through life. I’ll be happy when you buy me the toy that I want or the cereal that I want.  If not, I’ll pitch a fit right in the store until you cave in.  I’ll be happy when I’m old enough to do whatever it is you won’t let me do because you always tell me I’m too little.  I’ll be happy when I get a new bike and can get around on my own.  I’ll be happy when I get my driver’s license and you let me drive the family car.  I’ll be happy when I can get my own car.   I’ll be happy when I get a girlfriend or boyfriend. I’ll be happy when I graduate.  I’ll be happy when I  get into a good college.  I’ll be happy when I graduate from college.  I’ll be happy when I get a job.  I’ll be happy when I get married.  I’ll be happy when we buy a new car or move to the suburbs and buy a new house, and have 2.5 kids…then I’ll be happy.  I’ll be happy when I get a new job that pays me more money to pay all of these miserable bills, or a job that has a nicer boss, or better co-workers. I’ll be happy when I can take that dream vacation.   I’ll be happy when I can get a divorce.   I’ll be happy when I can get remarried. I’ll be happy when I can retire and travel.  I’ll be happy when the grandkids come over.  I’ll be happy when they leave.  I’ll be happy when I’m not such a burden on other people.  I’ll be happy when I die.

And we live life with such malcontent, that we continually wish it away.  We don’t want what we have now.  We want something better.  We have become a nation of self-seeking navel gazers more concerned about our own feelings than the fact that there are over 2 billion people starving to death in the world right now.  Or there are millions of AIDS orphans in Africa.  Or that people in Haiti can’t get beyond a poverty existence even though they sit 120 miles south of the richest country in the world.

Who cares about them?  I’m not happy! I don’t feel good about life or myself right now.  I don’t like my existence. I don’t care about others.  I just care about me. I want to be happy! And I will do whatever it takes to make myself happy…even if it is at the expense of other people. But the problem is, the sad truth is…I can never be happy, because it isn’t really my poor circumstances that makes me miserable, it’s my perspective on my circumstances. 

You can run from one thing to the next, but you still won’t be happy, because you carry your affliction deep inside you.  And until change can happen in you, you are destined to be miserable in life because you can never outrun yourself.  At the end of the day, if you continually make decisions based on something else you think will make you happy, you will find that you’ve actually created a bigger mess with more pain, more misery and more unhappiness than you had before.  And not only for you, but for anyone who happens to be around you.

That job, that lousy car, that no-good spouse, that miserable school—none of those things is really your problem.  Your problem is YOU!

Do you see a young woman or an old hag?

So what it is that makes you so miserable?  It’s your perspective. It's how you CHOOSE to look at things.  People have survived much worse than your current circumstances and yet can still live with a joy that makes no sense.  Concentration camp survivors.  POW’s.  Cancer patients.  People who have had one of their children raped and murdered.  People who have withstood horrific things in life, including multiple losses, who can have a joy and happiness while you are miserable.  What’s the difference? Perspective.

They have a purpose to their lives.  They have a passion for what they do.  They have a desire, not for their own happiness, but to make someone else’s life better.  And their outward perspective ultimately brings an inner joy to them.  Suddenly they are lifted above their own problems and life becomes an adventure because of their changed perspective.

The problem for most of us is that we are trapped in our misery and, are you ready for this?  We like it.  Oh, we don’t like being trapped, but we refuse to change our perspective, and so we remain trapped, prisoners of our own perspective.

God, grant me a fresh perspective today and help me to see that happiness is not a destination, but rather a manner of traveling.

Of Dungeons and Dreams

Ever felt trapped in a dead end job?  Stuck.  Unable to go any higher.  Or perhaps it’s a situation or a set of circumstances that seemed to have you locked in.  Wherever you may be, you have a choice.  You can drag through the day, hoping it will get over with quickly so you can go home and lay down, or you can meet it head on and make the best of it.

When faced with temptation, Joseph stood firm and did the right thing and it got him nowhere except the Dungeon. Ever wondered if it was worth doing the right thing? Ever had things go from bad to worse as a result of trying to choose to do the right thing? What do you do when you seemed to be locked in a tough spot and life doesn't make sense?  What do you do when you find yourself locked in the dungeon of your soul? 

Joseph was sold to Potiphar and was in his house 10 years, faithfully serving God and Potiphar.  The Bible says that God blessed everything that Joseph did, and Potiphar made Joseph chief of his household, in charge of not only the other servants, but all of the business affairs and in touch with many of the political leaders of Egypt.  The only thing that Potiphar withheld from Joseph was his own wife—for obvious reasons.

Gen 39:6 says that Joseph was “well-built and handsome” and that Mrs. Potiphar noticed him and began to desire him.  She tried everything to tempt him, coerce him, command him to do what she wanted, but he firmly resisted.  He did the right thing.  One day, she came and grabbed him and Joseph slipped out of his cloak and ran out of the house.  She began to scream for the other servants to come help her and then told them that the young Hebrew had tried to attack her and when she screamed he ran leaving his cloak behind.

When Potiphar came home, she told him the same story.  He grew angry and had Joseph thrown into the dungeon.  And that is where we pick up the story today.

Potiphar, most likely, didn’t truly believe his wife.  I say, most likely, because the Egyptian punishment for any slave who attacked anyone in their master’s household was instant death, no questions asked, no guilt received by the master for doing so.  If Potiphar had truly believed her, Joseph would have died instantly.   But there is the thing about saving face.  You can’t have those type of accusations hitting the neighborhood without major ramifications.  If Potiphar did nothing, people would quickly figure out that he believed his wife to be a liar, and that would bring shame on the household.  If he killed Joseph, he knew he would be killing an innocent man that had done nothing but brought the blessing of God on the household.  So rather than lose face, Potiphar had Joseph thrown into the dungeon where all sorts of vermin and disease were known to fester.  And the 10-year rise to head of the household was suddenly brought to a screeching halt.  He had consistently done the right thing and instead of being honored, he was thrown into jail.  Joseph had to have questioned God.  He had to have been discouraged and downcast.

Which brings me to you and me.  Why is it that whenever things take a down-turn we grow discouraged and begin to doubt God’s love for us?  Why do we retreat back into the destructive habits as a way to cope with our disappointment?  Do you ever find yourself questioning God when you tried to do the right thing and it ended up getting you fired or thrown out, or ridiculed?  Did you ever wonder why you were given a certain lot in life or how you seem to work and work and get nowhere financially?  And as you get lost in those thoughts,  the doubt creeps over you like a thick fog, and it is easy to see only your current circumstances and feel that God has abandoned you or that He truly doesn’t care.   It is during those times that Satan gets us to give up even hoping for God’s deliverance.  We just give up and let everything go.  But that’s human nature.

The devil would have you look at the future with no hope of anything ever changing.  Your marriage—it will never change.  Your rebellious child—he will never change.  Your dire financial picture—it will never change.  All of that stuff wrong in your life—well, you’re stuck with it.  It will never change. The devil knows that if he can get us to lapse into hopelessness, we will settle for just trying to get by the best that we can…and if we can’t, we will do ourselves in to seek to escape the hopelessness.  And then he’s got us.  Satan wants everything to look as if there is no hope of anything ever changing.

Joseph could have easily grown hopeless.  He could easily looked at his abysmal surroundings and said, “That’s it God.  I tried serving You and this is where it got me.  Well forget it…I’m through!”  But he didn’t. But he purposed to remain faithful to God even if he didn’t understand the why’s of his circumstances.

Gen 39:20-23  Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.  But while Joseph was there in the prison,  21 the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.  22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there.  23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

God hadn’t forgotten Joseph.  There was a bigger picture that Joseph couldn’t see.  God had a plan for him and Satan was trying to thwart it.  But Satan can never thwart God’s plan.   God sometimes allows harder circumstances to come upon us to prepare us for a greater work.  It all depends on attitude and the choice we make in dealing with our situations.

Choosing to trust God when all seems bright is not so hard.  But choosing to trust God in the midst of the storm when all seems lost allows God to build your faith as well as His glory in you. 

Which brings me back to us.  There are some  who believe your circumstances will never change and you just can’t bear to go on with life the way it is right now. So you look for your own alternatives.  You plot and you scheme and you figure out your own way to try to escape your dungeon, but the problem is, it only leads to a bigger dungeon.  You’re still stuck.  You haven’t found the happiness or escape you were looking for.  Only more issues.  More problems.  More  heartache.

If we are to learn anything from the dungeon experience of Joseph, it would be to look to God for our answers.  Trust Him when all seems dark.  Hope in Him when all seems hopeless.  It may take time.  Maybe years, but God is faithful and will bring you through to something greater as a result of your suffering right now. 

It means looking at the situation full on and choosing instead to be the best you can be right in the middle of the mess.  It’s refusing to give in to despair, but instead to look to God and what He wants for you, even though you might not be able to understand it  right now.

G.K. Chesterton, once wrote: Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.  Gilbert Keith "G. K." Chesterton

American Chesterton Society 

Don't give up hope.  God still sees you and knows where you are and what you need.