FROM THE PULPIT: CAN YOU CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY?

Happiness is something we all want, or at least we are led to believe we're all supposed to be seeking happiness. The founding fathers of this great nation wrote specific documents that guarantee our inalienable right to pursue happiness, but they certainly didn't guarantee we'd find it.

For our pursuit of happiness, the world is full of unhappy people. You find them everywhere, complaining about small inconveniences, making mountains out of molehills. They nurture their critical spirits, judgmental attitudes and pessimism about their lives. They have the unique ability to take a silk purse and turn it into a sow's ear. In every silver lining, they can find the dark thunder cloud. With solutions all around them, they focus on the problem and find every reason why your way won't work. Unhappy people worry about everything and resent your help to make their lives better.

Unhappy people are miserable, but do they have to be this way? Can a person choose to be happy? Several popular books suggest that you can. Basically, their advice is to stay away from negative people, dump your negative thoughts, focus on the solutions rather than your problems, be optimistic rather than pessimistic, and only participate in the things that fill you with a sense of purpose. Nice work if you can get it.

Jesus says if we want true happiness, there is a better way, yet this way often conflicts with our common sense and conventional wisdom.

Jesus' advice is found in the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes. A beatitude is a declarative statement that suggests certain people live in a privileged, fortunate circumstance. The word from Jesus is that these people are "blessed."

The word "blessed" is also translated "happy" and "fortunate." It is linked to other words like, "salvation," "peace" and the English colloquialism, "OK." Think about that the next time someone says they're "doing OK."

The grammatical structure of the beatitudes is in the indicative mood and contains an indirect ethical imperative. What this means in English is that we have a decision to make in how we live, and our decision bears a reward. Thus, we can choose happiness by adopting certain attitudes..

In the first beatitude, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see the kingdom of God" (Matthew 5:3). If we want to be happy, it becomes our choice to embrace our weaknesses, our poverty, and by making this choice, we experience God's presence at work around us.

Each beatitude offers happiness through a specific attitude or motivation. Each beatitude promises a specific reward. Over the next several weeks, I will be preaching on the beatitudes and how they shape our feelings of happiness. You're welcome to join us in church for worship, or visit us on the Web at www.1stpres.homestead.com/homepage.html

Each week we'll see what Jesus says we can do to increase our level of happiness. You can choose to be happy if you choose to live Jesus' way.