Happiness is something we all long for in a world that is filled with suffering, hardship and pain. The reality is that these negatives exist alongside happiness. However it doesn’t mean we can’t attain a place of happiness. Even the word of God say there is time to weep and to mourn but it goes on to say there is a time to laugh.
The mistake we make is we pursue happiness as a possession or main goal but it keeps eluding us; Why? It is said that Happiness is a by-product of our meaningful actions. True fact, we hear of many who possess great wealth or success but are not happy. As the proverb states, money cant buy happiness.
Happiness comes when we engage in work and other activities that are meaningful to us. At those times our focus is not on ourselves or our own happiness, but on what we are doing. It is while we are engaged in a meaningful activity that we realise we are happy and enjoying life. Therefore, it is important for us to find meaning in life and the activities we engage in. This is often no small task. God designed life to have meaning, but many people do not find it, and live their lives as described in Ecclesiastes.
In the book of Ecclesiastes 2, a story is given of a person who engaged in many activities such as amassing great wealth, accomplishing great task, having a great parties, excess drinking and sex but at the end of it all he could only conclude life to be Meaningless!. In the second part of the story, he discovers he was created for purpose by God in the sense that life is created to have meaning. This is contrarily to the ideology of atheist who believe that life is accumulation of accidents that take place. As a result he realise happiness could be found in productive work. Rather than looking for happiness on it own, he changed his mindset to live life knowing that he himself has meaning and bringing meaning to what he does; and gets satisfaction and happiness “in” his work.
Therefore we are urge to adopt like a mindset as above by thinking of ourselves and our work as having meaning. We will find that we are contend and happy, without seeking to be happy. Happiness is the profit of aligning ourselves to God’s purposes for us. The profit begins with developing a relationship with God and understanding what we are called to mean in this word. As always we need to be thankful and maintain a positive attitude towards work and see it as blessings from God.
