The pursuit of happiness

I recently had a discussion with a friend on mine, one which is topical for most young people. How hard should I work? How much time should I invest in my career? Some argue that we should spend more time with God, while others say that by spending time working, we are using our talents that He gave us. Each one of us needs to come to a find the answer ourselves through purposeful study of the Word and through the conviction of the Spirit. But here is an illustration that may help put it into perspective.

Have you ever had that feeling where you are “in the zone”? Sportspeople call it “flow”, where you are performing your skill and everything just feels so easy, you almost have an out of body experience as you watch yourself. And it is beautiful to watch.
All we do should be for the glory of God. If you are using your skill to further your own kingdom and desires, then you will never experience this feeling of flow and are missing the point of our life on earth.

Imagine you are a singer. Most people you know say that your voice is the most powerful and perfect singing voice they have ever heard. You love to sing. You use your voice to sing praise to God. And Jesus is The Conductor. When you sing, you feel like you were born for this, that nothing else matters. The singing illustrates you living out your life in pursuit of His approval.

When at church you stand with others and sing in a choir. When you have prayer time in your own silent space, you sing alone. But it is in the bulk of life that you sing neither in church nor in the silence of your own home. You sing in the crowds. When you sing, you stand on a small round stage, which is elevated about 3 metres above the ground. A short way ahead is Jesus, on a slightly higher stage, conducting and guiding you in song. All around and below you, as far as you can see are millions of people. They are all shouting and making noise and laughing and generally causing chaos. These are the people of the world, making a lot of noise.

And so you sing. You look at The Conductor and you sing in that perfect voice of yours. It isn’t easy, because the crowds are making so much noise that often you can’t hear yourself sing. You wonder if anyone can actually hear you. But The Conductor calls out and tells you that He is listening and you should continue singing to Him, and not to worry about the noisy crowds. So you carry on singing. As you continue to sing, one by one the people in the crowd turn and look at this incredible voice, and they see you looking to the conductor. They in turn look at The Conductor and eventually they are drawn to sing too, and they are also placed on their own stage overlooking the crowds.

You are up there, singing and just having the most incredible time as you continue to look to The Conductor and steadily more people join you in song, and your combined voices begin to drown out the noise of the crowds.
You experience flow.

As you’re singing, below to your left a group of people start fighting over something and tugging at one another’s clothes. Suddenly you notice that these pockets of squabbles are occurring all around you. You then see the reason. Some people are going through the crowd and randomly throwing out prizes – holidays to exotic locations, gold and silver, designer clothes, great big houses, instant fame and physical beauty. The people are no longer looking at you or The Conductor, but are now mesmerised by the desire for the prizes. There are not enough prizes for everyone, and so the fighting gets fiercer and fiercer. People work harder and fight more to get a piece of those prizes. They organise themselves into little groups that work together to get some of the prizes. When you see these things your first reaction is to take your eyes off the conductor and say “I want a prize too! Maybe I should go down there and fight for a piece of the action. If I work real hard and get in with the right crowd we can get a nice share of what is distributed. And many that are singing on stage do this.”

But the conductor calls to you and says, “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry saying, ’what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His Kingdom and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matt 6:28

You hear and you continue to look to The Conductor and sing. And as you sing, He begins to bless you with all the things that the people below are fighting over. Still you don’t take your eyes off Him or turn to your blessings for your fulfilment; instead you continue to look at Him, thank Him; sing for Him.

Don’t let the evil one lead you astray in this world by pursuing things that don’t have everlasting value.

Note: this story is a parallel for me of how we end up chasing the things of this world when we should be chasing after God. I am not saying that we should not work hard, because we should.
But there is a difference between
a) working hard and pursuing Christ and
b) working hard and pursuing the things of the world.
We all know in our hearts which category we fall into. In the end it comes down to faith; believing that we can solely pursue Him and He will give us all we need in this world.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion for Christ
NS