February 18, 2014
Dear St. Paul’s Family,
What is the secret to happiness?
That was the question posed in a segment on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition last Saturday, which featured Harvard researcher Matt Killingsworth. To get real-time data from test subjects, Killingsworth has developed a smartphone app through which users can provide instant answers to questions that researchers text them up to three times a day. Questions include, “How do you feel at the moment?” “Do you have to do what you are doing right now?” Do you want to do what you are doing?”
Killingsworth conclusion? People are most happy when they are fully engaged in their present activity, when their immersion in the moment creates little room to stew, worry, or fret about external stressors. Naturally, the most important question is, “How can people achieve that state of being ‘present to the present?’”
Killingsworth’s answer: “That’s the million dollar question, and I don’t know the answer.” [1]
Well, shucks. That is the big question, and it is one that seems to hound us all the time. What is the secret to true, lasting happiness? How can we learn to be fully mindful of the moment, without regard to pressing anxieties?
Of all the books in the Bible, the Psalms most fully covers the wide range of human experience and emotion. And it is so interested in the question of human happiness that it leads with the answer right off the top, in Psalm 1, verse 1: The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful. It’s likely that this verse has not yet shown up in the Harvard researcher’s test results, but the psalmist is unequivocally clear:
The secret to happiness is integrity.
It is being able to go to sleep at night with a clean conscience. It is knowing that, at the end of the day, despite all that you have suffered and all that has been done to you, you have chosen to take the high road. Even when it would be easier and less costly to do otherwise, you have not responded to injustice with indecency. That, according to the Psalms, will make you happy, every time.
Just ask Joseph. The text for this Sunday is a pivotal moment in his story. If anyone deserved to take a quick shortcut to Easy Street, and allow himself just a bit of pleasure in exchange for the pain from his past, it would have been him. So when Potiphar’s wife threw a pass his way, he could have fudged his principles just enough to get away with it.
But he didn’t.
And therein lies the secret to how Joseph was able to endure so much suffering at the hands of so many people for such a long time. He realized that, in the end, when everyone else might fail him, he only had himself and his God to answer to. And if he could learn to live with his image in the mirror and God’s image in his soul, he could live through anything.
Psalm 1 doesn’t use the word integrity, although it goes along way to explain it. Consider for a moment that the words integrity, integer, and integrate at first seem to be disparate words. They are terms of ethics, mathematics, and methodology that appear to have little to do with each other. But they all come from the same Latin root word, integritas, which means “intact.” (in: “cannot” and tigre: “be touched”) It means “untouchable,” “whole,” and “indivisible.”
To live with integrity means that you are neither conflicted in your principles or divided in your actions. It means you are completely solid and secure in your motives and behaviors. It leads to a kind of strength that can withstand even the greatest turmoil. You become like a tree, in the words of Psalm 1. A tree that is stable and steady, despite being surrounded by torrents of water.
A life of integrity recognizes that while you can’t control the actions of others, you can certainly control both what you do and with whom you do it. In fact, Psalm 1 offers a guiding word that Joseph never had: seek wise counsel from godly, trusted companions.
"Don’t follow wicked advice, or stand in the road with sinners, or sit with the disrespectful." Instead, surround yourself with people who will do more than merely brighten your mood or stroke your ego. Choose people who will tell you the truth, even when it hurts. Who will push you toward integrity, even when every fiber of your being begs otherwise. Who will give you sage guidance with such consistency that you can hear their voices, even when they are not speaking, even when you are alone. Who will make you hear Killingsworth’s questions, even when it is toughest to answer: “Do you have to do what you are doing right now?” Do you want to do what you are doing?”
Joseph didn't have those kinds of companions. But you can.
You see, integrity is not just about what you do when no one is looking. It is also about whom you turn to when you don’t know what to do. It is about who will challenge you when you are wrong, and who will love you even when you screw up. It is in those moments that the Spirit gives you the greatest gift a solitary sojourner can have in this long, weary life: the assurance that you are not alone.
I think you would agree: that sounds like a pretty happy life. That is the life I wish for you, as you wish the same for me.
Grace and Peace,
Magrey
The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
Psalm 1
The truly happy person
doesn’t follow wicked advice,
doesn’t stand on the road of sinners,
and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful.
Instead of doing those things,
these persons love the Lord’s Instruction,
and they recite God’s Instruction day and night!
They are like a tree replanted by streams of water,
which bears fruit at just the right time
and whose leaves don’t fade.
Whatever they do succeeds.
That’s not true for the wicked!
They are like dust that the wind blows away.
And that’s why the wicked will have no standing in the court of justice—
neither will sinners
in the assembly of the righteous.
The Lord is intimately acquainted
with the way ofthe righteous,
but the way of the wicked is destroyed.
Genesis 29:6-20
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome. Some time later, his master’s wife became attracted to Joseph and said, “Sleep with me.” He refused and said to his master’s wife, “With me here, my master doesn’t pay attention to anything in his household; he’s put everything he has under my supervision. No one is greater than I am in this household, and hehasn’t denied me anything except you, since you are his wife. How could I do this terrible thing and sin against God?” Every single day she tried to convince him, but he wouldn’t agree to sleep with her or even to be with her. One day when Joseph arrived at the house to do his work, none of the household’s men were there. She grabbed his garment, saying, “Lie down with me.” But he left his garment in her hands and ran outside. When she realized that he had left his garment in her hands and run outside, she summoned the men of her house and said to them, “Look, my husband brought us a Hebrew to ridicule us. He came to me to lie down with me, but I screamed. When he heard me raise my voice and scream, he left his garment with me and ran outside.” She kept his garment with her until Joseph’s master came home, and she told him the same thing: “The Hebrew slave whom you brought to us, to ridicule me, came to me; but when I raised my voice and screamed, he left his garment with me and ran outside.” When Joseph’s master heard the thing that his wife told him, “This is what your servant did to me,” he was incensed. Joseph’s master took him and threw him in jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were held.
