The Pursuit of Happiness

By Xavier Daniels

It seems to me that, in looking back over my life, I was always seeking to be happy. And what is wrong with that, you may ask! Perhaps I can speak for myself.

As a child I had nothing to worry about, really. But things changed when I became a teenager. I asked uncomfortable questions that the adults had no patience for, or perhaps they did not have any answers to. It was not long before I began to feel rather confused. Everything that they told me about life, God, or the future did not seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I felt dissatisfied with their answers and dissatisfied at how the world was going.

In my twenties the seeking led to the answer. I found Jesus! I was thrilled that God had chosen me from before the foundation of the world was laid.

The next nearly 40 years I was on a quest to serve God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, to the best of my ability. But despite my best efforts, true happiness seemed to elude me.

Since 2009, I’ve been living alone. My children all grew up and left home, and my wife had to move back to North America with our youngest due to his special education needs. I’ve been doing my best to share with the poor in spirit the spiritual wealth that I have been blessed with, but I have felt both this sense of aloneness and also joy in the Lord. There was a battle raging within me as time went on. I was comforted in the thought that I was busy for God. I was being levelheaded and learning to be happy with my situation and my company of friends.

Then the coronavirus lockdown happened. I am shut down. Spiritually speaking, it has been a wonderful time of retreat that I had not planned. How would I have known that this lockdown would be a special gift handed to me on a platter? It has been days of silence, prayers, reading, resting, hearing from God, and so on. It has been a special time of becoming more aware of His presence all around me. How awesome is that?! Then, on some days I am responding to the calls of desperate, confused, and worried ones. In all this I have by His grace ministered. Then more silence. I cannot avoid it. It is silent in my home. There is no one else here. How thrilling to be in this stage and state. It is like hearing the voice of God continually.

Last night a young man just 20 years old called and talked with me for over 90 minutes. He too is locked down. His family has been listening to TV evangelists. He called as he was confused, since he heard that if he keeps sinning he will lose his salvation. Then I woke up this morning when another woman called, so depressed with how her life is going and asking what God is doing and why she can’t just be happy. And I ministered. It was like being with Jesus, as He ministered to needy people all day.

Somebody passed on a link to a TV series called The Chosen. I felt blessed watching it. There has never been a serial made on the life of Jesus in this way, week after week. This young Christian couple are funding the production of this series entirely through crowdfunding. No Hollywood! This is a testimony of how the Spirit is moving and how they are just trusting the Lord for the needed funding. So thrilling! What is really happening here? Did I break through into a different dimension of happiness at this time of the lockdown?

It took since 2009 till now for me to come to some fundamental conclusions. Happiness is in knowing Him! It is not in success. It is not in wealth. It is not in the good name and reputation that we build up. It seems that pursuit of happiness is not the goal. It did not seem to be Jesus’ goal. He suffered much. His mother suffered; she must have had her heart shattered that day when she watched Him suffer physical abuse of mind-boggling magnitude and death. And most of His disciples too had to suffer for their faith, and their life was taken from them out of turn. Millions of His children have since suffered for their faith. Billions who live on this earth endure pain, poverty, deprivation, sickness, ill health, abuse, famines, starvation, wars, imprisonment, and they continue to suffer. We know that salvation in Jesus is not the end of suffering. Then, did Jesus come to tell us how to be happy anyhow? I do not see this as His goal.

If we did not experience pain and suffering, it would be so easy to be filled with self-assurance, pride, arrogance, independence, lack of concern for others, lack of empathy and compassion. But when we experience deprivation, loss, and the ensuing pain that comes with it, we look at our life afresh and at our God too. We begin to understand that there is more to life than just being self-centered. My pain and my loss are what draw me closer to God. If it were not for this experience in my youth, I would not have found Jesus and this meaning to life. He came not to live, but to give His life that we too may live, and through us more and more men, women, and children can live.

Let us hope and pray that during this lockdown many people can make a U-turn in their lives, a metanoia from the way that they have been heading, to seek God. Let us pray that we can live close to the Lord and in accordance with His Word. Let us seek to live an inclusive life of love and caring, so that we are eventually looking more and more like Jesus.

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