happiness on Common Grace

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

In Jonathan Kozol’s book, Amazing Grace , he tells of the struggles and sufferings of people in a community in the Bronx, New York. He is amazed at the courage and resilience he found there. He then ...

Pastor: Let us then confess our sins to God our Father. People: Merciful God, we confess that too often we have failed to put on the armor You provide.  We try to protect ourselves with th...

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

Leader: When our Lord Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, He lifted His hands in blessing, promising to be with us always. Even though His Word confirms His presence in our lives, we are a sinful...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

He has no design upon us, but to make us happy. . . . Who should be cheerful, if not the people of God?

Father God, you come to us in the everyday. You give us your Word and your Spirit that we might hear your voice, and follow your ways. We confess that we have neglected your words to us and pretended ...

Pastor: Even on this joyous day of celebration let us not forget that we are sinful people who do not deserve the precious gift of salvation that God has given us in the death and resurrection of Je...

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. RESPO...

G. K. Chesterton was on cue when he suggested that a man knocking on the door of a brothel is in fact looking for God.

Go, as God’s people of joy, carrying in your hearts the good news that our God delights to seek and save all who are lost. May you know how deeply Christ values each and every person who you encounter...

Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through...

We pray to You our Lord, our Savior, our Merciful God, that all our sins may be forgiven. Our sins are like a straight jacket, binding us, and keeping us from relationship with You. Although we know w...

We believe, O Lord, that you have not abandoned us to the dim light of our own reason to conduct us to happiness, but that you have revealed in Holy Scriptures whatever is necessary for us to believe ...

I have a nagging sense that when we read the word blessed , we either feel indifferent or suspicious. Both of these responses are likely the result of the way the term is (over)used in our day-to...

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we ha...

In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ...

Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body ...

Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  People: Amen.   Pastor: Shout for joy to God, all the earth! People: Sing the glory of his name; make...

Until Christ completely cures us and this world, our happiness will be punctuated by times of great sorrow. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be predominantly happy in Christ. Being happy as the norm rat...

The first thing the group of American church leaders noticed about the Central Asian pastor they were meeting was his smile. It was huge. It was so big that anyone who looked at it had to smile too!...

We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good l...

Leader: Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. People: Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever. Leader: T...

Morality or duty . . . never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Optionally, add: Let us worship the Lord!

God made human beings as He made His other creatures, to be happy. . . . They are in their right element when they are happy.

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

It is a mark of the essential morality of fairyland (a thing too commonly overlooked) that happiness, like happiness anywhere else, involves an object and even a challenge; we can only admire scenery ...

God doesn’t “just” want you to be happy; he wants you to be holy as he is holy and to find true, lasting joy in him.