Today, I was catching up with an old friend, telling her about this exorbitantly-priced ice cream I bought the night before. She was telling me how she's happy with the 1-dollar ice cream you can get off a road store. To which, I replied, "I'm happy with nothing". Its interesting how a statement like that could mean two opposites. That nothing will be enough satisfy me or I don't need anything, I'm satisfied as it is. Of course, what I meant was the latter. Though I must admit, this set me pondering. At what point then can we be truly satisfied? Truly happy?
The Satisfaction with Life index was conceived using factors like wealth, health, access to basic education, etc, in an attempt to determine just how satisfied people are with life. The biggest most effective factor of the index was to simply ask people if they are happy. The 2006 International ranking puts our little red dot of a country as the 53th most satisfied country. That's behind countries like Saudi Arabia, where systematic violation of human rights occurs on a daily basis or Iceland, with the highest reported crime rate in the world. Just what exactly is our problem? We have a good socialist-democratic governance that builds us lifts on every level on our humble HDBs and shelters for walkways. We have an abundance of schools and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. Just exactly what are we so unhappy about?
Personally, I believe satisfaction is highly subjective. A man who has been poor all this life would be satisfied with 40 dollars a day as an odd jobs laborer. A CEO of a Fortune 500 company would drop 40 dollars a day on the floor and not bother to pick it up. In Proverbs 10:22, it says that, "The blessings of the Lord makes one rich. And He adds no sorrow with it.". One will never dispute what the good God has added unto our lives, but we often forget that sometimes all He has to do is make you see what good you already have.
Sometimes, things will happen the way it does whether you pray for it or not. Take a Christian slowly losing his way in his walk with the Lord due to his work and other commitments. If he prayed for a new direction in his spiritual walk with expectancy, and a fellow church member prompt him to join a ministry the very next day. He would see his answer there and then, and go on to serve God in this ministry as his new direction. If he didn't pray about it, I believe his friend would still ask him, but he would fear the change in his life and have no confident that doing so will do any good. If you don't expect it, you won't have it. The point here is, its more often than not that your prayers will be answered, it's just that you're not asking. Or as the humans we are, we are looking for answers we want to hear.
Happiness is there, sometimes rampant, but mostly hidden in the seconds of life, waiting to be explored, discovered. It calls for you to look for it and not for it to look for you. There are times I see myself trying to fit the ideals of my church where I was trying hard to be a man of destiny, shaker of the earth. A man of destiny can't be weak; you can't show people that you're tired, or that you have problems. An earth shaker has to be confident, strong and show no fear for what tricks the enemy dishes out. How can you shake the earth when you shake when speaking in public? What would the visitors think? Doesn't your God take care of you? No, all words leaving my mouth has to praise the Lord, I have to be a prayer warrior, speak His word then God will see what a faithful servant I am and love His loyal steward so that He will rain all his blessings upon. Friends, I'm not implying that God doesn't want us to glorify his kingdom, but is this all He cares about? If it is, I hate to imagine the kind of God whom I serve, conditional, superficial, demanding.
God loves us. God loves us for who we are, not who we are trying to be. He says its alright to feel small, because we are small. Like every father wants his child to be a person of mission and great character, no good father would shun his child for being slow, falling or being unable to hit the mark. Which servant of the living God would want to see his walk of faith shatter from a wrong decision or a moment of weakness? God is our loving father whose there to pick us up, who says its okay to fall, let me help you get back onto your feet, let me help you finish your race. All you have to do is accept that you can't do everything right, that you are not God. All our God wants is for you to take the hand He offers you, for you to love him as He has love you because He is always there for you, running to you in your time of need.
Maybe you think you're not happy or satisfied with life, what you have is never enough, a void lurks in your heart no matter how much you try to fill it. What if everything you've been looking for was right in front of you all along? You just have to believe it and you can have it.
