When It's All About Being Happy

I was a pre-teen at the tail end of the hippie generation – that free-spirited group that made the first bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirts trendy. The hippies were all about a sort of peace, love, and happiness. Now, flare-legged jeans are back in style (or they were, last time I checked the trends), and there’s still a lot of talk about “being happy.”

You’ve heard it:

“I just want my kids to be happy.”

“Find someone who makes you happy.”

“Just be happy. It’s your choice.”

“I broke up with him because we weren’t happy.”

“My old job didn't make me happy.”

“I’ll be happy when __________” (fill in the blank).

Is being happy what it’s all about? 

With a name like mine (Joy), people generally assume (and for the most part, rightly so) that I’m a happy person. Lately, though, I haven’t felt all that happy, probably because the anniversary of my mom’s death last summer is this week; grief mars happiness. However, finding a way to be happy won’t fix anything. I must go deeper.

In Matthew 5, the biblical home of the Beatitudes, Jesus repeatedly speaks about who will be blessed, and in several translations, the word blessed is replaced with happy. But if you read the text, you will wonder how on earth a person can be happy when they are poor in spirit, mourning, hungry, persecuted—the list goes on.

Here’s the thing: Scripturally speaking, the word happy doesn’t have the same meaning we usually ascribe to it.

Blessed (or happy) is translated from the Greek word makários, which refers to God extending his benefits to his people. Makários describes the advantages and supreme blessings God confers on us. In other words, makários is directly connected to his goodness and his participation in our lives, not a mere feeling of happiness. It’s not about who we are with, who we have lost, where we work, what we have, or how our brains sort things out. It’s about seeing God at work in our lives through the fulfilling moments, the mundane days, the hard stretches, and the times we bust a gut in laughter! 

In verse 12, Jesus turns to the reward we’ll receive for persevering through the hard stuff, and he no longer uses the word makarios. Instead, he says, “Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven,” using the word chairó, which shares the same root as the Greek word for grace, charis. He turns the terms and says to be “glad for grace.” Chairó—rejoicing and being glad—denotes a Spirit-wrought joy! (By the way, the word translated as joy is from the Greek word chará, which also shares the same root as the word for grace!) 

We miss the mark when our goal is happiness, whether it be for ourselves or for those we love. Happiness is fleeting. What we really need is the grace-connected joy of the Lord that comes from deep within. It’s a joy that’s fueled by the Spirit, upheld by God’s grace, and endures until we receive our heavenly reward. 

You may be grieving a loss or feeling sad over the state of the world. Maybe you’re fretting about the needs of people you love or fighting against the hard press of life. But here’s the good news: You can go to Jesus and let his grace give you the everlasting joy that’s better than any short-lived happy feeling. His grace is unending and his joy is real.

So, let’s put on our flare-legged jeans and be glad!