Happiness is . . .

At 23, life was full of excitement and opportunity. It was a time to explore and discover what God was going to do in and through me. That exploration took me to Brazil with Good News Corps, a short-term missions experience sponsored by MBMS International and my home church, for three years.

I was living in a bairro called Boqueirão and needed to get to Villa São Pedro to teach some music lessons. The bus took twice as long as walking, so this day, I walked.

My walk took me down a dirt road, grooved by frequent rain runoff. Alongside the rutted road were ditches with stagnant water. The smell from these was not always pleasant. Wooden structures with open windows let the sound of hissing pressure cookers out into the air. Ah, the black beans were being cooked for the day. Children and mongrel dogs were running, shouting, barking – life was in the air.

Suddenly, the feeling of happiness washed over me. In the middle of a dirt road, surrounded by the crudest of dwellings, in a poor neighbourhood of Curitiba, I discovered I was happy. My first thought was that if I could have transported any of my North American friends to this spot at this instant none of them would have believed me. Yet I knew in my heart that happiness had come to me.

While this incident does not sound profound on paper, it has deeply affected my life and how I have lived my life since then. Happiness, I discovered, was more than surroundings, more than what I owned, more than the people in my life. Happiness was about what God placed in my heart. It was gladness and contentment that I accepted in my heart in spite of what I was doing or whom I was with.

Even in times of deep sadness, frustration and discouragement, there has been a remembering that God brought happiness to me. It’s been the light that has drawn me back to contentment with life. (Although sometimes it has taken time to come back to being happy, being content.)

In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote about contentment, this happiness with life. It doesn’t come from having the best arguments, or knowing the most, or from an abundance of wealth, he says. It comes when we are satisfied with God’s life for us. “A devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God” (1 Timothy 6:6 The Message).

Thank You, Lord, for entering my life through this experience of happiness. My contentment comes because of You.

Lorraine Dick is associate pastor of South Langley (B.C.) MB Church.