The Secret To Being Happy

Do you want to know the secret to being happy?

Happy are those who seek him with all their heart . . . and walk in His ways.

(Psalm 119:2-3 CSB)

And so begins the longest Psalm.

But happy?

I thought we weren’t promised happiness, only joy.

So I can’t wait to dig into the Hebrew word translated as happy, or blessed.

Certainly it means joyful, or holy, or something else really churchy. 

Turns out it just means happy.

Or relieved.

I consider the secret to this happiness.

Seeking God with my whole heart and walking in His ways.

Practically speaking, what does that even look like?

Sure, part of seeking God involves reading His Word.

But a deep dive into the Hebrew reveals that seeking God with all our hearts is less about what or how much we read, and more about the way we read. 

We are to read conversationally.

Asking questions along the way.

Listening for answers.

Having honest conversations with a Creator who loves us and wants us to know Him.

I continue my deep dive into the Hebrew.

If part of seeking God is reading conversationally, then most of walking in God’s ways is living conversationally.

Intentionally noticing His creative activity around us, and talking with Him about it.

Asking questions, searching for meaning, expressing our thoughts and emotions.

And listening.

I might have ended my deep dive here, except that a synonym for walking in His ways jumps off the page and troubles me:

Passenger.

Because recently I’ve had a little passenger experience.

Scratch that.

A lot of passenger experience.

To and from Wyoming.

Three days of four separate flights defined by delays, weather complications, reroutes, cancellations, rebookings.

Very frustrating. 

The airline even lost my underwear.

Seriously. 

I spent a huge amount of time and energy trying to control and understand what could not be controlled or understood.

Waiting for information from the flight deck.

Communication with the passengers, though, turned out to not be their thing.

Somewhere along the way I just gave up. 

And ceased trusting an airline whose journey did not meet my desires or expectations.

Which circles me back to the troubling synonym:

Passenger.

Because it occurs to me that part of walking in His ways is accepting that on life’s journey we are the passengers.

Not the pilot.

That there are some things outside our understanding and control, and we have to be okay with that.

Sometimes life’s journey does not line up with our desires or expectations.

Often we experience delays, interruptions, inconveniences, or metaphoric bad weather. 

In all of these, our Pilot invites us to ask our questions and talk with Him about our thoughts and feelings.

Because He loves conversations . . . and He loves us.

And He can be trusted to get us where we’re supposed to be.

With our underwear.

Which circles me back to where I started.

To the secret of being happy:

Seeking the Lord with all our hearts and walking in His ways.

I love that the Hebrew word for happy also means relieved.

Because, as it turns out, being the passenger on life’s journey with a Pilot who loves conversation and His passengers feels like a relief.

See you in a couple weeks.

Love,