Happiness. This is an emotion associated with peace of mind, contentment, satisfaction, or just the ability to be at ease with life itself. When we can't find it, we try all sorts of things to get it. The writer of Ecclesiastes recorded a journal of observations on things he sought to try to find happiness and though he was able to find accomplishment, pride and other things, happiness was always a fleeting thing. He phrased many things as empty and trying to grasp wind. Often that is how we feel about happiness. Will I ever be happy? Will I ever be content and just be able to enjoy life? Why can't I feel happy all the time? In the journal of Ecclesiastes, in chapter three, he tells us that there is a time and place for things, and everything has a season. What people fail to understand a lot of times, is that happiness is not something that you can have all the time. Life has its cycles and so do emotions. There isn't a pill for it, we can't find it in a bottle, its not something we can eat.
Perhaps one of the reasons that happiness is so fleeting in our lives, is that we are inwardly seeking the one thing that is inside of us that can't be put there by human means. Eccl.3:11 states, "He has put a sense of eternity in people's minds." What does this mean? It means that there is nothing on this earth that can give us peace within our souls and spirits - without God. At best, everything in life is temporary and does not last. It is only with God, that we can find true happiness and come to know the "peace that passes all understanding (Ph'p.4:7)." We can spit at this, we can get mad and throw a tantrum. Yet, the truth of it is self evident just by looking at people and life around you. The news abundant with stories of people that maim, kill and destroy - all over bits of land, money, mineral rights, oil, and other things. They do this because they believe that getting these will bring peace of mind and happiness. Yet, they do not. Another comes along and takes away what one fights for. It is an empty struggle. We see people chasing money on a daily basis, some making thousands - even millions of dollars in a day. Yet, there is no happiness, and life for them is always a fight about who is going to get what they have. People try to find happiness in getting high, drunk, inebriated in some way, yet the altered state of reality it offers is only fleeting and the problems are always there when we come back to reality. There is no satisfaction because the one thing that we have in our hearts (Eccl.3:11) that we seek is not there --- God! Why do you think the writer of Ecclesiastes comes to the conclusion he does in the end of his journal?
We all want that state of happiness, and we all want to be trusted in life. Yet, we pursue the things in life that make us unstable, unreliable and not able to be trusted. Proverbs 25:13 says, “Reliable
friends who do what they say are like cool drinks in sweltering heat
— refreshing!” Learning to live in integrity and
keeping your promises will show others that you can be trusted and will
in turn make you a much happier person. And when God is in your life - and you're not chasing after things that make life empty, you don't have to lie to yourself and others about your life, and trustworthiness is something that becomes part of you. Why? Because you are no long chasing after fleeting things and you learn that life with godliness brings contentment that many cannot understand. Why can't they understand? Maybe it is because they haven't found the one thing in their life that is missing --- God!
Jim
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