As long as you’re happy... How many times have you heard that? Or said it out loud? We all just want to be happy, right? Whether it’s in our job, in our marriage, or just our little individual experience on this earth. But when life does what it does and saturates us in un-happiness, then we begin the search for answers. A new discipline or routine, a different outlook, a pathway back to a happy life.
Now, I will be completely honest with you. Happiness has been a search lately for me, personally. Within the last year or so, several things crashed down around me, all at the same time. I have been embarrassed to share the unhappiness that has consumed my own mind. At the same time, I have always known that this is not uncommon for God’s people. And here, the very first Psalm sums up both the my struggle and my comfort, as it does for all of God’s people.
So after a too-long silent reflection, this discussion is grievously overdue. I want to explore this soul-crushing and eternally-freeing question together with you…
What does it take to be happy?
Happy is the one Who does not walk in the counsel of wicked and in the way of the sinners he does not stand and in the seat of scorners he does not stay Rather in the teaching of YWHW is his pleasure, and on His teaching he meditates by day and night. And he will be like a tree planted by streams of waters Who's fruit it gives in its time and its leaf does not wither and all that he does he prospers. Not so the wicked Rather (they are) like the chaff Who the wind blows away.
Psalm 1 begins an entire book of prayers and songs with a declaration about this very topic “Happy is the person…” The description follows in a threefold answer. Largely missing from Hebrew poetry, the relative pronoun אֲשֶׁ֤ר (who, that, which) signals the answer to our question in verse 1, 3, and 4. Happy is the one “who…”
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