"If anyone desires to come after Me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow Me. For whoever will save their life, shall lose it: and whoever will lose
their life for My sake, shall find it."
(Matthew 16:24-25)
As I've been pondering the subject of happiness this morning-an elusive and
seemingly unattainable state for so many-I am led to these words of Jesus.
I believe the secret of happiness lies embedded in those words,
painful though they appear to be.
How else explain radiant people like the young man who sat in our living room
and described how his six year old boy died in his arms from leukemia. Today,
this man finds fulfillment in giving himself totally to helping college students.
Or the woman I visited recently whose husband turned out to be a homosexual
and demanded a divorce. Some years later, this woman also lost her eyesight.
Yet, she is a cheerful, loving person, fully self-supporting.
You might say that such people almost have a right to be unhappy.
That they are not, lies in the way they spend themselves for others.
I have observed that when any of us embarks on the pursuit
of happiness for ourselves, it eludes us.
Often I've asked myself why.
It must be because happiness comes to us only as a dividend.
When we become absorbed in something demanding and worthwhile,
above and beyond ourselves, happiness seems to be there
as a by-product of the self-giving.
(1914-1983)
American Christian writer and
best-selling author
Image courtesy/Alchetron
"Happiness Is..."
By Catherine Marshall
A Devotional taken from The Women's Devotional
New Testament With Psalms And Proverbs
New International Version
(c. 1995)
Zondervan
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