What is Happiness Anyhow?

Happiness- Feeling, showing, or expressing joy.  Delighted, pleased, or glad as over a particular thing.  Characterized or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy.

So, having been feeling fairly well the past few days, I wanted to take an assessment of my feelings, and what it means to be happy.  I used to think happiness and joy were two different things.  I even declared recently from the pulpit that they are different things.  However, after some dictionary diving and thinking, I suppose they are closely related.  Not like brothers or cousins, but more like maybe light is to the sun.

I think I am on to something.

So it is 5:17a right now.  I look out my window, and no light.  The sun is hiding.  He is chilling somewhere in Nantucket or something right now I bet.  In a few hours though, as he blazes his way across the east, he will reach the Hoosier state and meet me where I am so I can go on that hike later. Working third shifts now prevents me and the sun from hanging out sometimes.

It gets difficult.  Why?  I have alllll  kinds of excuses.  I typically want to sleep around 8a-2p.  Then I eat, shower, get ready for my day, and by then I usually only get an hour or two of good sunlight, especially during the winter.  So my skin gets pastier than ever, and I get colder than I otherwise would.

So happiness and joy are like light and the sun.  The sun radiates light, and joy radiates happiness.  Ya dig?

I know though that things happen.  Maybe your life feels like a big third shift.  You never get the light.  Or maybe your life forecast is cloudy, hazy, foggy, with a 99% chance of precipitation.  You never feel like you will see the light of the sun!  It does not mean the sun is not there, he is just being blocked out by circumstances.  Even on the stormiest of nights, the light the sun radiates is still in existence, you just are not experiencing it this moment.

So do this with me, think seriously... Are you happy?  Or are you not able to experience happiness due to outside circumstances?  Correction... are you choosing not to experience happiness due to circumstances?  Cause joy is the root of happiness, and is always available, therefore you can always have happiness.  I am not talking about "fake it til you make it," but real, true, genuine happiness.  The kind that makes your smile while you are alone and wave at random people while driving.

Light comes from the sun.
Happiness comes from joy.
Joy comes through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
A relationship with Jesus comes from opening your eyes to the fact that He is always there even when you feel like circumstances block Him from your sight, that He has guided you to this very point in time, that He loves you with a perfect love, and that He would rather die and go through Hell for you than to go back to Heaven without you.
By the way, He did that.

Do you know Him?