looking for happy

a fellow blogger posted on her blog yesterday about happiness. a coworker of hers suffered a tragic loss yesterday, and of course those kinds of things get us wondering about why things happen, and how wrong they seems sometimes.

i started to think about God's idea of happiness, because i really feel we are "programmed" to seek what we usually call "happy."

i know in Christian circles, most of the time, talk about happiness quickly switches to talk about joy instead. Joy being the good things that spring up from the inside, and are not based on worldy things, like selfish desire or circumstance. i guess i just want to know what happy is, in concrete terms, not shifting ones.

hmmm. i know God's Word is happier than anything, but i needed specifics. i ended up going to the Sermon on the Mount ... here is the version from the Message bible (i substituted the word "blessed" with happy as i read this):

You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

i'm sick to death of temporary happy. i need long-lasting, real, cannot take it away happy. and in all of my seeking, the only words i have ever found that seem to lead to SOLID happy, are the Words of God. i know that i know that there is truth in every one of those examples above. i have yet to experience all of these instances, but i most certainly have experienced more than a couple. and on days when it seems overwhelmingly, bitterly, savagely SAD in the world, more than i can handle or bear, i am clinging to the kind of happy that these words talk about.

ps. amendment and addition of photo to this post, as the Lord pricked my heart and said to me "THIS is what happy looks like."

pps. amendment #2: the reason i substituted the word happy for "blessed" is that it appears to me that happy is something we want to achieve on our own, blessed is something we are given. not sure, but that seems relevant here.