A Prayer for Happiness
For Meditation (Rick Hutton)
Most of us desire to be happy. We make plans for our lives, set courses of action, and try to put ourselves into positions or places where we can have the best opportunity to achieve things that will make us happy. Unfortunately, even after we achieve the happiness we were striving for, we find that it’s short lived and not as satisfying as we had hoped.
Do you know that God desires for us to be happy? It’s a happiness that’s different than the happiness we so often seek, and it’s a happiness that’s more satisfying and long lasting than any kind of worldly happiness we could experience. The happiness God desires for us to have is the one that will remain in the midst of the pain and struggles we face in this broken world, and it’s one that’s rooted in God’s eternal faithfulness and love.
This summer, as we begin looking at the Psalms as the prayer book of the church, we see that Psalm 1 invites us to pray and to live in such a way that we can and will experience this ultimate happiness, and it’s a happiness that is not only for us, but for those around us, the people we encounter in our everyday lives.
As you read Psalm 1 think about how you would define happiness. Where do you look for happiness? When life gets hard, where do you turn? What would it look like for you to delight in God’s word?
Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.