True Happiness

This morning I read Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man [whose]...delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

How much of our lives are consumed with pursuing happiness. Aren't we always doing what we believe will make us happy?

I went for a bike ride today. Why? Because it's March 23rd and it's 69 degrees. I thought that riding my bicycle, reading, and thinking would make me happy. Of course, I didn't think it would make me eternally happy, just for the moment. (And it was great by the way.)

For lunch I had a very small, very unfulfilling microwavable cup of soup. Why? Because right now, I want to get healthy and lose weight. So I drank it (yes, you can actually just drink these cups of soup... pretty sad) because I thought it would make me happy.

Here's the point: we always do what we think will make us happy. Or to put it another (and definitely better) way: we always do what we want most. For a full, amazing treatment of this, check out Jonathan Edwards' The Freedom of the Will. You can read it free online.)

Sometimes we're wrong. Okay, we're wrong almost all the time. But that doesn't stop us.

Amazingly, the prayer book / worship-order of the Old Testament starts out with a declaration of what will truly lead to happiness. We can spiritualize "blessed" if we want to, but at the end of the day, it's very close to our "happy".

It's as if God is calling out through the generations to his people, "Hear me - quit you vain pursuits of happiness apart from me and know that it will be found ultimately in me. In my word!"

And yet, I wonder how many people took God seriously today? I wonder how many of my readers believe God at this point? We believe so many things. We believe the little promise on our stick of deodorant, we believe the grumblings and cravings of our stomach, we believe the heaviness of our eyes and the the temptation that more sleep longer will make us feel good, and yet, how often do we believe God?

Blessed, happy, truly happy (ultimately) is the man or woman or family or church who meditates and loves and delights in my Word.

More happy than the man who sleeps an extra twenty minutes in the morning. More happy than the woman who gets the same stomach as the woman in "O Magazine". More happy than the guy who goes to McDonalds to feed his craving. The Word! Love and meditate on the Word.