Why Christians are the Happiest People

Mel Jenkins, one of our church's elders, is a veteran missionary, church planter, and pastor. Recently he shared a devotional about happiness, and it was such a blessing I wanted to pass it on to you. Thanks, Mel.

I recently watched a Netflix documentary called “Happy.” In the film researchers went around the world to answer the question: What really brings happiness to a person’s life?

In the slums of Kolkata, India, they met a rickshaw driver named Manis Singh. Manis transports people around the city pulling people with his one-seater rickshaw. He lives in a small shack with his wife and two children. Manis doesn’t have an easy life. During the summer the heat burns through his thinly-soled shoes as he pulls people around the city, and when the monsoons arrive, the rain blows into his shack through the blue tarps he uses as walls.

But though Manis has very little of this world’s material wealth, the filmmakers concluded he is basically a happy person, at least as happy as the average American. What brings him happiness is returning home to see his young son at the top of the hill waiting for him at the end of the day. His little boy, his loving wife, and his newborn baby bring him happiness.

At the end of the film the researchers suggested five things that make people happy:

• Taking time to play
• New experiences
• Close connections to friends and family
• Doing things that are meaningful
• Appreciating what we have

Watching the documentary reinforced my own conviction about happiness: Committed Christians are the happiest people in the world. Here are five reasons:

The Joy of the Lord

"Faith may dance because Christ sings; and we may come in the quire [choir] and lift our hoarse and rough voices, and chirp, and sing, and shout for joy with our Lord Jesus."
--Samuel Rutherford

Have you ever been happy because someone you love is happy? You so identify with them that you enter into their delight and victory.

That's what Rutherford means, I think, when he speaks of our joy "because Christ sings." We are in Him, the Scriptures say. His death, burial, and resurrection become ours. And it is His joy that is our strength (cf. Nehemiah 8:10).

Pursuing Him, we may enter His victory and that brings joy. By faith to see the satisfaction in His eyes, to feel Him full of power and triumph, to know He knows He has won everything and that everyone He loves will come home and be with Him forever - there is joy.

The hollow alternative is to look for joy somewhere else: the fleeting affirmations of others, the pleasures of the flesh, our own temporary successes. In the end this is the way of despair.

I would rather try, and pray He gives me a greater vision, to see the light of His face, to imagine His voice like thunder, to settle in with all the great and small, the rulers and kings and shepherds and shopkeepers and soldiers and construction workers and single moms and little kids, to adore Him together, with never a thought of any glory but His. O, what joy, to shout and sing and laugh and clap and whistle and stomp and pray, all together: Worthy is the Lamb!

Joy and a Flashmob

Speaking of joy (my last post), my friend Rod, an elder in our church, sent this video to me. It's a flash mob brought together to honor a local bank in the Spanish town of Sabadell. But Someone else is honored, too.

Listen to the whole thing--only six minutes, and watch the faces. Wow.

 Here's what they're singing:

Ode To Joy
Joyful, joyful
We adore Thee
God of glory
Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee
Hail Thee to the sun above
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness
Drive the dark of doubt away
Giver of immortal gladness
Fill us with the light of day
With light
With light
Mortals join the mighty chorus
Which the morning stars began
Father love is reigning o'er us
Brother love binds man to man
Ever singing march we onward
Victors in the midst of strife
Joyful music lifts us Son ward
In the triumph song of life

Singing in the Morning

When I was a little boy, my mother used to sing in the morning while she was making breakfast. It’s one of my happiest memories of Mom. Waking up to her pleasant soprano started the day on a bright note.

Being around joyful people tends to raise your spirits. Which makes me think about our Savior. It hit me the other night that He is full of joy, and that spending time with Him helps me find joy, too.

We’re used to thinking of Jesus as the “Man of Sorrows,” and certainly He was. But remember what Hebrews 12 says: looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (v. 2).

His redemptive mission must have cast a shadow over every day of His earthly life. No wonder Isaiah says He was “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). But what was the “joy set before Him?”

Joy in returning to a place of fellowship and love within the Trinity?

Joy at having completed His mission, completely purchasing the salvation of His people?

Joy at the adulation of heaven, the glory that He alone deserves?

Yes, certainly His joy includes these things, and probably a thousand more.

I’m glad my Savior is full of joy. This life is full of heartaches and hurts, but the One who loves us has overcome them all. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” is what Nehemiah told his grieving people (Nehemiah 8:10). I want to learn that, too.

I find joy in knowing that that my mom is not the only one who sings in the morning:

    The LORD your God is in your midst,
       a mighty one who will save;
   he will rejoice over you with gladness;
       he will quiet you by his love;
   he will exult over you with loud singing.
(Zephaniah 3:17 ESV)