True Happiness

   I’ve come to believe that we do not understand happiness.  We know what we enjoy, and we think of that as happiness but our understanding is flawed.  What we consider happiness may instead be sinfulness.  We are hampered in our judgement by original sin and the sinfulness of the world in which we live.

   We don’t truly know what happiness is because we don’t understand the happiness waiting for us if we follow God’s will in our life.  We talk of silly things about heaven.  Will there be ice-cream; are dogs there?  These are earthly thoughts of happiness but have very little or nothing to do with eternal happiness.  Only God knows what awaits us and we can’t know or understand in this life.

   We are created in the image of God and are intended to share in His love and the happiness He promises.  By serving the will of God we are given hints of the joy that awaits even though we will not fully understand it in this world.

   Look to yourself.  You were created by God to know happiness.  God would not have promised happiness unless He intended for us to have it.  We were created in His likeness and given dominion over all other creation.  When He created the world and all that was in it He saw that it was good (Gen 1: 1 – 25).  Then, only after He had created all else, He created mankind.  “God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1: 27).  Only we were created in the divine image of God.

  He gave us dominion to rule over His creation, tending it with care and love.  Had we continued in His will our happiness would have been assured.  However, Satan interfered with our happiness by tempting our first parents with pride.  They turned from God and lost the happiness they had known.  Now we struggle with understanding happiness because we know nothing of the happiness God intended for our lives.

   I don’t know what awaits me in heaven.  I only know that it is for that happiness that I was created.  God grants me glimpses of happiness in this life though I recognize that I will never fully understand the depth of joy He has intended for me.  My life is a journey from the partial happiness of this world to the total happiness of eternal life in the presence of God.  That is the happiness intended for us from creation.

   “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of the righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”  (Romans 14: 17)