I am a caring human. A very, very caring human. And I have my flaws. But I care. Oh, I care.
I would that such heartful caring could render me immune to my human propensity to make choices that would hurt others. But as of yet, I have not reached that lofty pinnacle of achievement.
This life has us all confused at times. We all fumble and we bumble, as we make our way through this multifaceted, indescribable existence.
We strain our metaphysical, spiritual, mental, and emotional muscles to try to lock onto something that makes sense. We squint and we try to focus... But usually, despite this valiant effort, many things remain blurry.
We are probably all, every one of us shackled with some sort of compulsion; some flavor of the sundry addictions that the shop of life lays before us in splendor and grandeur, begging us to partake.
And we probably all partake at one point or another. But we march on, looking for purpose in the midst of so many unanswered questions.
Yet, deep down, somehow we often already know the answers to these questions. But we so commonly lack the courage, or the ability, or the tactful execution to act on those answers and make new paradigms bloom within our habit-laden lives.
There are some questions that have not only already been answered for me, but whose answers have also been acted upon by me. And it is those answers that very often inform my choices.
These guiding answers of mine are what I hold to be a steady stream of truths emanating from God's throne on high. They are so solid; ever so strong, and eternally stalwart in the face of opposing ideas that to my understanding reek of less truth.
I feel that He is there; that He cares, that He is looking down upon us with endless and incomprehensibly perfect love. He cares for our eternal well-being, and yes, He fully comprehends the fact that things are extremely hard for us at times.
But we agreed to this. We signed up for this. We may not remember doing it, but we did. The pain, the sorrow, the confusion, we all signed up for this. Every last one of us. It is the struggle that makes us.
A path of ease never made anyone stronger.
The depths of lows that we experience here in life... They open up our understanding and they free our minds to comprehend, appreciate, and fully embrace the rapturous joys that can be offered by those varying levels of happiness that are here for the taking.
But how to take happiness? How to grasp it? How to embrace those inexpressible joys in our lives?
The answer is here before us:
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."
"And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual..."
Now read that again!
But this time, read it with your whole mind, your full heart, your entire soul, and your eternally cherished spirit. Read it with every last bit of understanding, curiosity, yearning, and hoping that you can possibly muster from deep within that being that is you.
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."
"And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual..."
Did it sink in? It is a formula for happiness; the holy grail if you will. And all that remains is for us to seek out those things that God has shared with mankind, and to study them, and to come to know for ourselves the supreme happiness and contentedness that is to be had in following the path that He has laid out for us.
If He created us, it stands to reason that He knows a little bit more than we know. How ignorant and how foolish would we be not to search out His words, and not to try to discover what treasures He has left for us; those treasures of spiritual knowledge that are definitively the instructions for how to find that "holy grail of happiness".
Everything we do, all of our actions here in this ever-confusing existence, we do for one thing and one thing only, whether or not we realize it.
And that one guiding motivation is that we are all just trying to find happiness. A search for happiness is what drives us; it's a yearning that is permanently embedded deep down within the recesses of the human heart.
Yet so sadly, thousands die at their own hands because they have exhausted so many efforts trying to find this hidden holy grail of happiness, and yet they still have not found it.
But even more sad is the undeniable fact that it was right here, right under their noses all along. They just didn't see it. They didn't take that leap of faith and give God and His Son a chance.
They didn't come unto Him.
They instead spent their days seeking those illusory false projections; those misshapen ideas that fool so many of us, those things that we thought would make us happy but turned out only to end in disillusionment.
I know for myself, without any doubt, that the true answers to so many of the questions that we have in this life can be found within the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We just have to cultivate a desire to seek them out.
And once we find them, we need only latch onto them with everything that we have.
That's it. That's our job. Done.
We must grasp these eternal answers and grip them, and focus on them and hold them in front of our view. We must envelop ourselves in them, and surround our lives with them. We must refer to them when making decisions, and always measure ourselves against them.
Once we follow this formula that I have learned for myself to be the true formula for happiness in this life, we will indeed taste the sweetness of that priceless treasure that we call happiness. And it will be a higher and more potent level of pure happiness and peace than we ever could have previously fathomed.
And then when life gets hard; when stresses pile up, when overwhelm sets in, and when sorrow takes hold... We will be surprised to see welling up within us a new strength that we never knew we had. And at that point, these words will make full and perfect sense to us:
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Let it sink in.
That was Jesus speaking. And He speaks truth.
I know this for myself. And I am sharing it with you now. I am giving you the formula for happiness.
And this formula for happiness is worth more than all the gold in the world.
Just turn to God. Turn to Jesus. Say a prayer to God and close it in Jesus' name. Speak to Him about everything. Ask questions. Tell Him things. Share your feelings with Him aloud, even though He already knows them.
Search for the powerful words of God, Jesus, and God's prophets in the living scriptures. Search for those treasures of eternal knowledge that are just so extremely invaluable.
Do this, and God and Jesus together will fill you with such immeasurably high, yes, such nigh unquantifiably lofty levels of peace, joy, and happiness that there will be no words to truly articulate it.
And you will be ever grateful that you took that leap of faith and gave them a chance.
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