HAPPY NEW YEAR

What goes through your mind when you think of what it would take to make the next year a “happy” one? I have to admit, my first thoughts were rather superficial and self-centered (those usually go together). I figure maybe if I make more money and work less, or if I have less conflicts with people and fewer difficulties, then it will be a “happy” year indeed, but knowing that the word blessed actually means happy makes me wonder if the people that I read about in scripture who were “blessed” led lives that fit into my parameter of “happy”?

In Genesis 12 God says to Abram “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” God then says that He will make him a great nation and bless him (make him happy). Now being told to leave your home, people and family doesn’t sound easy to me, in fact that would be pretty scary. Joseph and Paul also were both blessed by God, yet had some pretty rough years and let’s not forget Job! So, how could people who went through difficult times be happy? Maybe the problem is with our understanding of the word, connecting it to circumstances and not to God.

I received a text message on New Year’s Eve. Saying “2008 wasn’t so great, but 2009 will be fine” and I thought to myself “anything easier than last year will be just fine with me,” but there I go again equating easy and good when in all actuality easy is probably more closely equated to idle or maybe even lazy, which I don’t think is necessarily good at all. The last 16 months of Corinne and my life were pretty brutal. From losing my job, three of our four children moving out (two of them out of state), one joining the Marines, another starting a dangerous profession (as if the Marines were a safe one?) one almost getting killed, two having to go to the hospital for some pretty serious things and there’s a whole lot more. How could last year be a happy one? Where is the blessing in any of that? But if God lead Abram into a desert to become Abraham so that the nations of the earth would be blessed, intended Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers for good to save many lives (Gen. 50:20), showed Saul (who became Paul) what things he had to suffer and sent him to Rome where he would be put to death, but through which we would receive much of the New Testament. If these men were blessed (happy), well, then it’s entirely possible that I had a happy year after all and what I need to be looking for is God at work in me to benefit others and not for an easier way. After all it is more blessed (happier) to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).

Let me ask you a question that I’m asking myself.
If your dreams came true for this next year, if you got all the things that you wanted for your life, would it make the world a better place for others, or just for you?

Happy New Year