From the Pastor

February 2008

If you have been to a bookstore recently, you have no doubt seen all of the various self-help books that are available: help with exercise, weight loss, finances, smoking cessation, relationships...You name it, there is a self-help book for it.

I read recently that the 2008 trend in self-help books is books that deal with happiness: what is it, how to find it, and how to make it last. Authors are grabbing on to this idea, no doubt because they have sensed that people in our stressed out, over-stimulated, anxious, over-extended world are looking for something. And so … happiness it is. Follow these steps, and happiness—long lasting happiness—can and will be yours!

Listening to my iPod makes me happy. A good cup of coffee makes me happy. A good book makes me very happy. A good bike ride makes me extremely happy. Spending time with people I care about is an incredibly happy time.

But the happiness—the "high," if you will—of these moments passes. Not that this feeling is bad, and not that it is not worth having and even seeking out, but it does fade. When that happens, I find myself looking for the next thing to make me happy.

I could read one of these books, I suppose, but it occurs to me that what most of us are really looking for is something called joy. Joy, at least in the sense described in the scripture, is not necessarily a jump-up-and-down or laugh-out-loud experience. Joy is a deeper, more abiding feeling. Joy comes from knowing that God has given us forgiveness, grace, salvation, and eternal life in Jesus Christ. Joy in these gifts of God is what sustains us—in moments of uncertainty, in moments of fear, even in moments of grief and sorrow. Joy sustains because it enables us to look to the promises of God and cling to them. Joy is what we experience when we know that we are so very profoundly loved and valued by our God.

There is only one Book that I can think of that describes that, and I imagine we all have at least one copy already!

In Christ,
Pastor Brenda