Gaining Happiness

Gaining Happiness

What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:26

A recent headline questioned, “What Makes People Happy?” The article explained that psychologists now know it’s not great riches that make for happiness but friends and forgiveness. The experts reported that materialism, the gaining of “things”—whether that’s the newest cell phone, expensive clothes, or a luxury car—is actually toxic for happiness. In contrast, studies with thousands of people showed that the happiest people are those who surround themselves with family and friends, don’t care about keeping up with the Joneses, lose themselves in daily activities and other people, and most important, forgive easily. God told us these truths a long time ago in his Word: For a man or woman to gain the whole world and all its riches and things and lose his or her own soul is pointless.

Putting these truths into practice, especially at Christmas, can make a difference in all our lives. When we invited a Chinese student who was attending a local university but had never been in an American home to join us in celebrating Christmas, we found that our traditions bloomed with new meaning as we shared them with a new friend from across the world. We also learned that taking groceries to a needy family and participating in the Angel Tree ministry (Prison Fellowship’s outreach to children of prisoners), when our kids got to help pick out the food, toys, and gifts, brought the biggest blessing because we were involved in making someone else happy.

Looking at things from God’s perspective, in what ways could you pursue happiness by giving yourself away during this holiday? —CHERI

Father God, help me to forget about myself and concentrate on you by loving people outside my immediate family as well as those at home. Show me a lonely neighbor we could invite or someone I can help who can’t repay me.

The means to gain happiness is to throw out from oneself, like a spider, in all directions an adhesive web of love, and to catch in it all that comes.

—LEO TOLSTOY (1828–1910), RUSSIAN NOVELIST AND PHILOSOPHER