Fresh Start Devotionals

Happiness For years I’ve said that God isn’t as concerned with our happiness as He is our character. Though I’m not prepared to take that truism back, I do want to revisit it and think it through a little more. Certainly it wouldn’t be correct to say that God is more concerned with our happiness than our character, but neither is it correct to say that He isn’t concerned about our happiness either. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived wrote, “And I have seen that nothing is better than that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot. For who will bring him to see what will occur after him?” Eccles. 3:22 (NASB) So while I’m not willing to take back my previous statement, I don’t want to give the impression that happiness is a frivolous, unimportant thing in life. If given the choice between happiness and unhappiness, wouldn’t you rather be happy? I don’t know if you can hear the whistling in your ears as you read this, but as I’m writing it, I can hear the tune of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” echo through my mind and see big yellow smiley-faced circles everywhere. The kind of happiness I’m thinking of doesn’t have anything in common with these trite symbols—it is much deeper than a contrived state of mind. Happiness is … well, I don’t really have to complete that sentence, do I? You know what happiness is. You’ve either experienced it, the opposite of it, or both. You know what happiness is as well as I do. And given the alternative, perhaps you’d agree with me that it is preferred to unhappiness, but do you agree with me that God cares about our happiness? Yes, God is more concerned with our character than our happiness, but really, the only way we will ever find real happiness is to be a person of strong character. God is concerned with both, and without the latter, we will never experience the former. Character counts. Especially when it comes to your own happiness. Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).