The Pursuit of Happiness
Rich Mullins
Release Magazine
Spring 1992
1.
Forget about finding happiness. Happiness is not worthy of your search.
2.
Bake a cake - a really rich cake, preferably from scratch and
especially if you are an inexperienced baker or a tested, tried, &
notoriously awful cook. The value is in the baking more than in the cake.
3.
Call up some enemy of yours and invite that enemy to eat the cake with
you. If the cake is good you may lose an enemy and gain a friend. If the
cake is bad, at least vengeance is sweet.
4.
If you can't think of a single enemy, then call up a friend. Invite
your friend over to eat the cake with you. If the cake is good the favor
may be returned. If the cake is awful your friend may go buy one from a
bakery for you. If you are without any enemies or friends, take your cake
to an old folks' home. Eat it with them! If the cake is good you will no
longer be without friends. If the cake is terrible you will no longer be
without enemies.
Finding a friend, making an enemy - now those are things worth
pursuing. Happiness may come tagged on - but even if it doesn't, at
least you will have done something and established some relationships.
5.
Memorize Isaiah 40 or the first Psalm or Psalm 91. Read the closing
chapters of the Book of Job. Meditate on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).
Write out one of the Prison Epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians,
Collosians) and send them to some other unhappy person.
All of this may not make you happy but it will tell you how to be holy.
Once you tie that knot you may find yourself in a position to be made
happy.
6.
Work hard. Clean something. Find new and more space-efficient ways of
folding your clothes. Rake someone else's yard for them. If you are
unhappy maybe you can help someone else be less so.
7.
Go back to the third chapter of Lamentations and then repeat after me:
"It is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
The yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence
For the Lord has laid it on him."
8.
Reread the 23rd Psalm and remember that if the Lord is your shepherd, then
you are in a lush pasture. You are by a still stream. If it seems
otherwise to you, it may be because you would rather be happy than be
God's. If this is so, then you have
more reason to be happy than
anyone. God has chosen
you - ungrateful, decadent you - and
being His is a joy and a happiness that goes beyond anything else you may
seek, and in your folly settle for. God will (in His mercy) make you
discontent with anything less than Him.
So we have only one step left...
9.
Rejoice.
Copyright 1992 by Release Magazine, reproduced with permission