Be happy

 

I was driving down a road near my house, a road I’ve driven down a thousand times, in my 13-year-old car, listening to some acoustic jazz from the 1990s, when I suddenly realized I was happy.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think of myself as being typically unhappy. Truthfully, I don’t believe I think of my emotional state much at all.

In that moment, nothing had really changed about my life. I’m like most people, I guess. I have a mortgage, a loan I’m paying on, a car payment (not on my 13-year-old car, however), dealing with long-term health issues in my family that require regular medical bills – pretty ordinary stuff. I haven’t recently received any financial windfall, my monthly bills are the usual ones, nobody had recently told me I was good-looking or smart or talented.

I was just driving down the road, when it hit me: I’m happy.

Have you ever had those moments? You’re listening to a song or reading a book or watching a movie or looking at a sunset or playing with the kids (or grandkids) or eating a really good meal and suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, you’re just hit with this sense of happiness? Or maybe what C.S. Lewis would call being “surprised by joy?”

In his book, Surprised by Joy, Lewis talks about his life’s “stabs of joy,” those fleeting moments that hint at something greater, that strikes unexpectedly, of something good that can’t be fully explained in words. These are moments you can’t create for yourself; even if you listen to that same piece of music again, or watch that same movie or visit the same garden or have a conversation with the same person, you’re not going to get that same inexplicable reaction, that surprise at suddenly feeling something moving that catches you completely unaware.

Now, for those of you who have read Lewis, you know in some writings he seems to differentiate between “joy” and “happiness,’’ treating “happy” as if it’s lesser than “joy.” And in the context in which he’s writing, I agree. But he also, in A Severe Mercy, says, “It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.”

In my reading of the Bible (take that for what it’s worth), I find Scripture uses words like joy, happiness, contentment, delight, and satisfaction as, essentially, synonyms for the same type experience. For my purpose, I’m using “happy” in much the same way Lewis, I believe, uses “joy.”

There is a cartoon I have seen several times, of two robed men – one the master, the other the student – sitting cross-legged on some mountain. The master or guru or teacher has this blissful smile on his face while the protégé says, “The hokey-pokey? That’s what it’s all about?”

Yes. You put your whole self in, and sometimes you shake it all about. That’s life, isn’t it?

As a Christian, I’m called to be happy – or joyful. 1 Peter 1:8 says we are to be “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have that feeling every day. Paul writes to the Galatians and asks, ‘’What has happened to the satisfaction you felt…?” or in another translation, “Where, then, is your blessing …?” It is as if he is saying, “What happened to your joy?” If the Gospel – the Good News – doesn’t make a person happy, then what will? In Philippians 2:2 he says, “Make my joy complete …”

Joy is listed as a Fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23). Too often I find myself forgetting everything past “love.” We all love “love,” don’t we? But it seems to me that love is not a stand-alone; that love should be – maybe has to be - accompanied by joy, peace, forbearance (patience), kindness, goodness … The word “fruit” is singular, as if all these traits are part of the same, singular thing.

I wonder if we can fully, truly experience any of those characteristics the way God intended us to if we don’t experience them all. Can you have joy without love? Love without joy?

The Apostle John is rightfully credited for writing so much about love. Yet in the very beginning of the letter we call 1 John, it’s not love he is longing for, but writes, “We write this to make our joy complete.” And he ends 2 John with “I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”

We Christians sometimes seem to have a hard time with happiness. I think of the verse in a hymn we sang growing up which says, “Worldly pleasures all forsaken; Take me, Jesus, take me now.” (I Surrender All).

We can make happiness trivial, like we do so many things. But when Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence “that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’’ I don’t think he was talking about buying a new set of golf clubs or getting a really good burger at a local pub. To Jefferson, this “pursuit of happiness” was something more profound than something transient or just based on experiences.

The key is where we derive our happiness. If it is, indeed, in things, we soon learn that things break or wear out and we require new things. If it’s in seeking experiences, we soon learn we need another experience, a better one, one that is more intense. As Pope Francis said, “Seeking happiness in material things is a sure way of being unhappy.”

That is where I like what Lewis wrote, describing joy (my “happy’’) as “those fleeting moments that hint at something greater, that strikes unexpectedly, of something good that can’t be fully explained in words. These are moments you can’t create for yourself …”

John Piper once said, “Happiness is not an object to be desired. It is the experience of the object. … Idolatry is not in wanting happiness, supremely. Idolatry is finding supreme happiness in anything other than God.”

That, I think, brings me back to my realization of being “happy.” I was not happy because I was driving a road, because I have driven that road thousands of times without that feeling; or from driving a car I have driven many miles in, or listening to a piece of music I have played endlessly.

I don’t know why it suddenly hit me that I was happy. I don’t know where the thought came from, or why that particular moment. I just know it hit me, and I was … well, happy.

And maybe the best explanation is back to Lewis, who wrote, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Or, to fit my moment, if I find myself with a sudden feeling that nothing I was doing could create or recreate of itself, then maybe I was getting a glimpse of another world, of what God has promised for us, down the road.

I’m thankful when I get moments – glimpses – of that happiness where I am.

I don’t know where I found this quote, but I like it:

“Chasing happiness is like chasing the rainbow. The rainbow always fades before you find it because it’s only a by-product of the sun. If you want to find a rainbow, perhaps you should be chasing the sun instead.

“But if we chase the sun, we’ll find rainbows. It’s the same with happiness. If we chase happiness, we won’t find it. But if we chase the Son, he’ll fulfill us, and we just might find happiness along the way.”