A happy New Year wherever you are. To be happy is to feel, show or cause pleasure or satisfaction according to the Cambridge Dictionary. That is fine but what are the ingredients for happiness?
Walking along the beach at Southwold in the sunshine just ten days before Christmas seemed to be a perfect moment to reflect on happiness. No one about, calm sea and no wind, a scene that was almost surreal. So surreal that I soon realised that life without anyone about, with no waves and no wind is not really life at all.
However much we may wish it today, truth is that the year ahead will have a mixture of headwinds, turbulence and people to contend with; but it can still be happy. You will have your own ingredients for happiness but two stand above the rest; such good health as age and genetics permit coupled with love; the love of family, friends and of God.
Of those factors as health grows less certain and when human love seems fickle and transient the constant feature that will never fall away is the great love of God. God’s love brought about our relationship with him and gave us undeserved access to his loving heart.
Today if you are hard pressed to find anything to be happy about, pause and remember that even when life empties of everything that gives us rhythm and purpose and when human interaction ceases, God’s love will be there for you still, enveloping, calming and warming the coldest winter day.
A Prayer
Lord, thank you for bringing us safely to the beginning of a New Year. Give us strength to face all that it holds in store but beyond human existence may we have the grace to remain aware of your great love for us; love that gave us your Son and love that will protect us until our last breath.
God, may you be graciously pleased to bless us with happiness, this New Year and always, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.