The Happiest People on Earth (Part One)

Who are they? According to the UN they are the people of Denmark. A study looking at things like health and access to healthcare, family relations and job security, political freedom and government corruption concludes the Danes are ecstatic. Well, good for them! Absolutely! Who wouldn’t want these? They’re all good and we should want our politicians and leaders to deliver them.

But I want to use a different, equally valid measure of happiness. One of the therapies I’m using is “mindfulness”. This helps me focus on what’s going on now so I don’t worry about the future, ruminate about the past, but appreciate the world I’m in and my present experience of it. Though not coming from the Christian tradition, these are all acceptable within the Christian faith. One exercise I tried entailed walking around as if I were the happiest person on Earth, my every footstep spreading peace and joy, occasionally pausing to appreciate something. I felt like I was in a Gene Kelly movie, when he dances around with a big smile on his face! But something deeper occurred to me – I really AM the happiest person on Earth! No need to pretend! How does someone who’s spent most of his life with a face like a wet fish, feeling numb inside and wishing things were different conclude he’s the happiest person on Earth? This: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).” Blessedness is one synonym for happiness. Christians have EVERY spiritual blessing/happiness in Christ! It’s kept in heaven where it can’t be got at by enemies. How much more happiness can you get? 

“If God is for us, who can be against us! He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things? (Romans 8:31b-32)” Wow! What a generous God! Read the rest of that chapter to see how much God loves us! How happy we are! We see ourselves as unworthy worms (and that is, in a sense, rightly so), but God sees us in Christ as a spotless bride! While not losing that sense of unworthiness, we need to grasp what God thinks. Walking by faith, not by sight. Some of us find that easier than others. If you’re like me you’ll have known it in your head for decades… then beat yourself up because you don’t understand why you don’t feel it. We don’t HAVE to feel it, but how great if we can! My confession: I’m only now feeling it because of antidepressants, CBT and mindfulness. But it’s not making me feel things that aren’t there. It’s enabling me to feel things by boosting serotonin in my brain, showing me how to be positive and motivated, living in the present rather than dwelling on the past or the future. I’ve had decades of anguish and misery, so now I’ve the chance to change and I’m grabbing it! I don’t find it devalues the experience, it enables it. 

Here’s a more down to earth way to give and get help. “Let us encourage one another.” Christians are on the same side and we need to act like it. I’ve spent too much time criticizing other Christians - backbiting, being suspicious. Way before the meds and therapies I’ve been working on that, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, looking for the good instead of nit-picking. I’m now actively encouraging others and receiving it from them. I’ve failed in this for too long and don’t want others to learn the hard way. 

I’m not the happiest person on Earth in isolation – I am the joint-happiness with all my Christian brothers and sisters. We are one in Him, dear friends, and that’s how He wants us to live.