Clem Aitken was a church elder in Vancouver, Canada. After a long life of service to God and His people, Clem was stricken with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
As his journey’s end approached, his family rigged up a computer program so he could type messages. Finally, all he could move were the ends of his thumbs.
When his wife came in one morning, he had already slipped away to heaven. But he had left her a final message with two lines from an old hymn:
“O blessed God, how kind are all Thy ways to me.”
It’s often assumed that the Christian must be unhappy because we don’t find happiness in the things the world pretends makes them happy. But we have a private stock of happiness they know nothing about.
One of the wonderful titles of the Deity is “the Happy God.” (1 Timothy 1:11) The word “Blessed” is usually inserted instead. It’s often said that happiness is dependent on happenings, and so waxes and wanes. But that’s only true if your happiness is anchored in the shifting sands of time. What if your happiness is in God?
The words of Psalm 1 could be fairly translated, “O the happinesses of the man who[se]…delight is in the law of the Lord…He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
The believer doesn’t look for happiness where sinners do, where pleasures, like chaff, are blown away by the wind. Instead we plant ourselves by the river of God so we can “take root downward, and bear fruit upward.” (Isaiah 37:31)
It’s true Jesus was called the “Man of Sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3), but His life was overlaid with happiness. Imagine watching surprise spread across the face of a once-blind beggar who was seeing for the first time! Or sharing the delight of a loved one brought back from the grave!
But there was even greater happiness for Jesus. He could say, “I delight to do Your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8), or as He put it, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 4:34) Cooperating in God’s Big Plan is tasty and nutritious!
Most everyone knows the story of the Prodigal Son, but have you noticed the repeated refrain? The shepherd says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!” The woman says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!” And at the end, the father tells the angry sibling, “It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.” (See Luke 15.)
You see Jesus’ point? The religious leaders should have been rejoicing with heaven’s angels and heaven’s God that prostitutes and ex-cons were finding their way home to the Father. Instead they scowled, Is this any way to treat a prodigal?
Oh son, said the father, “All that I have is yours.” (v 31) But if you’re going to enjoy the happiness in the Father’s house, you’ll have to come through the same door as the prodigal. And, said Jesus, “I am the door.” (John 10:9)
Come on in!
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, November 4, 2023