Unhappy… that describes just about everybody these days. We have stuff, lots of stuff or at least a lot more stuff than our parents had. Even the poorer of society have electronic gadgets. Yet we never have enough to be happy. We have knowledge, we can find the answer to almost everything, in a moment, on the internet. Then we have a world full of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and self-help writers. We should be all well helped- but we are still unhappy.

So why?

I came across a quote from Blaise Pascal awhile ago worth thinking about. Blaise Pascal was a 17th century scientist, theologian and Christian. Here’s what he wrote;

“All unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own room.” The reason he says is, “The natural poverty of our feeble mortal condition is so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.”

So we need noise and distraction.

Do you get it?

Unhappiness is caused by our own busy-ness. We love noise. We are never still. We rarely truly relax. In the end the more we hurry the more unhappy we become.

I am currently living in a place with no television. Wow! Culture shock! Once we got used to the lack of noise we’ve thought that maybe when we transfer houses next year we’ll forgo the TV. It’s wonderful like this.

The psalmist wrote in Psalm 46:10 ” Be still and know that I am God.” The Hebrew phrase “be still” means to let go your grip, let your hand sink down, to cease.

Just stop whatever it is and let God have place in your life or circumstances. “Know that I am God”. Everything we understand from the Bible is that God will become involved if we let him. To know that God, the Lord, is really God is happiness.

So I, like every human, have to deal with life, pressures, problems and issues. It’s all stress! However if I know that God is really God, what on earth can there be to worry about? If I stand or sit still, or shut the noise off and just think about this simple truth…. that alone brings peace.

And when peace returns I am happy- truly happy.

I am suggesting most of us are to busy to be happy. So if we want to be happy we’ll have to stop some of the busy and open our life to God. Then we are on the road to happiness.