A Post-Happiness World by Wil Triggs

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Two weeks ago, a news analysis piece in the New York Times titled, “Are We Living in a Post-Happiness World?” really sort of got me thinking.

The article defines happiness as “a positive state of overall well-being combined with a sense that one’s life has meaning.”

It seems that a lot of people are giving up on happiness. Yet there is considerable time, effort and money being spent on trying to scrutinize happiness on a global scale. 

Did you know there is a World Happiness Report? This was news to me. Produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the Ernesto Illy Foundation, the study has apparently been released every year since 2012.

In the most recent report, of the 156 countries analyzed, Finland ranks first, South Sudan 156. The United States comes in at 19, its lowest ranking so far. There are sections relating happiness and voting patterns, the effects of technology, prosocial behavior, addiction and unhappiness, and more.

Church is, in the author’s mind, perhaps regrettably, a thing of the past. In bygone days, churches were “central to a community’s integrity.” She quotes Dacher Keltner, director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, who said, “Church gave you awe, joy and ecstasy.” Keltner continued, “You collected in a group. You sang a little. You gave money. You got to chant.”

Even when some replace the immediate physical space known as church with virtual substitutes, most people have a hunch that it is not the same. And this loss of physical space and the lack of shared flesh and blood experiences of regular worship together is all part of the post-happiness world.

But the church is still here.

Those of us who still attend church regularly might not think of our church as a place of awe, joy and ecstasy, but maybe we should recognize that perhaps that is exactly what it is. And while we may not realize it, at least Keltner recognizes it because it’s something he doesn't have anymore.

What if happiness and joy comes not from obtaining it ourselves, but from living in such a way that what we are doing is part of the joy of Christ? This joy isn’t exactly ours to own, but a sort of fulfilment, a vessel through which Jesus passes on the joy set before him.

I’m probably not saying it quite right. It’s what Jesus prayed and Pastor Moody preached, “that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”

So the happiness we long for, the joy that refreshes, isn't even something we can own. What if joy comes when we do things Jesus wants us to do, things that we may not think we want to do or even can do on our own, things we can choose to do no matter what life is throwing at us? It’s the Holy Spirit at work, encouraging us, enabling us to what we might feel is impossible.

I’m thinking of the people who came forward to serve in Kids’ Harbor so that other people's children could have a place of their own to learn and grow.

Or the retired missionary who used to give money to our evangelism camps in Russia back when such camps were legally permitted there.

What about the people who spend a good amount of time faithfully praying for College Church, clicking on the missionary prayer letters in our church family news emails on Fridays and praying for them, asking God to bring revival to our tired and angry world.

What if joy is on display in the mom and her kids walking to Wheaton Square apartments to invite children who live there to a Backyard Bible Club. The mom, then leads a parade of joy-filled, happy children across Main Street, behind the buisness and down the street to the right backyard for the club. 

I remember a family who vacationed in Eastern Europe and saw a need there so great that they came home and started a family foundation to make a difference there.

Or the unseen STARS families who stay past the third service to clean up the plastic communion cups after our Sunday morning communion services.

I think of every person who walks into church on Sunday carrying hurts and pains and sorrow, only to set them down to help carry another brother's or sister's burdens. Together we stand and pray and sing and hear God's Word preached.

The Times piece concludes by quoting an authority on happiness and joy, “I don’t think about happiness anymore,” she said. “I think about joy. And if you string together enough moments of joy, maybe you can have a happy life.”

Comparing that conclusion with the joy I witness in the people around me, well, there really isn’t any comparison.

So how will the joy of Jesus Christ be fulfilled in us today and when we gather together tomorrow?

Thy Humility by Emma Bodger

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Emma is a sophomore at Wheaton College as well as a member of College Church. Her parents are Keith and Melody Bodger. Says Emma, "I have been going to College Church for almost six years and have enjoyed reading your Saturday morning musings for almost as long." We're delighted to post a musing from Emma today.

I read a great devotional a few months ago, written by Amy Carmichael. She wrote, “Take the opposite of your temptation and look up inwardly, naming that opposite: Untruth—Thy truth, Lord; unkindness—Thy kindness, Lord; impatience— Thy patience, Lord; selfishness—Thy unselfishness, Lord; roughness—Thy gentleness, Lord…” and so on. 

I decided to try this and come up with an opposite word for my every sin and look up to God as my source. This worked until I found myself feeling prideful. Pride, that pesky sin most easy to fall prey to, the prompt inside that isn’t even a voice because all it has to do is point toward yourself. and you think, “Yeah, what about me?" Pride is not a skeleton in your closet, and it doesn't lurk in the recesses of your basement. Rather it dresses respectably and slides quietly into the passenger seat of your sinful heart, making you forget it’s there.

So as I was trying to apply this simple practice as a defense against this perpetual sin, I found that I couldn’t do it when I deemed humility as the opposite of pride. I couldn’t pray, “Thy humility, God” to the God of the universe! This is Yahweh, "the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 34:6-7)

He is the only one who shouldn’t be humble—the one who deserves all glory forever and ever. Utterly and completely sovereign and good. So when I felt my pride taking hold, I'd beseech God, “Thy…” and then halt, feeling the impossibility of my supplication.

After several weeks of this, I remembered the hymn Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-11 (CEB version):
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.
who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited
Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
For this reason God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus, equal with God, chose to become human, taking on all of our human
limitations, in a position without prestige, dying in the most ugly, shameful way possible at the time. He washed the feet of his friends and disciples, he hung around with and healed people no one else would have anything to do with.

And this is the God of the universe. He is worthy of all blessing and honor and glory, the Righteous One who will open the scroll when the time comes. He took
on human flesh and lived as a servant and died as a criminal.

When I pray to God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, I can pray "Thy humility," because impossibly, bizarrely, in the greatest reversal of all time, he humbled himself in order to take the penalty of our sins so that we can be made clean.

Proceed to the Route by Lorraine Triggs

in

My husband and I just came back from a relaxing and refreshing few days in the country. I am talking real country—cornfields, forests, show pig farms, posted signs for squirrel hunting, deer, darkness with stars and quiet. It’s a bit strange to this city girl that all this exists just over an hour from Wheaton.

What's strange to me is how quickly I lose my sense of direction in all that wide-open space. I can locate the rising sun, but it doesn’t feel like real east to me as in the lake is always east. That east. Miles are meaningless to a person who goes by the number of streets or traffic lights or markers in route to a destination.

I tend to give people specific markers to look for—“Okay, the bank time and temp sign is on the left and our street is on the right. It may or may not be working, but you know what I mean. If you go through the traffic light and see a Walgreens, you’ve gone too far so turn around and go back one short block from the traffic signal and turn left at the bank sign.”

Out in the country, it’s hard to be that specific about cornfields, at least for me. Hence, our recent heavy reliance on Siri for directions, and for comic relief. The directions to the short ten-minute drive to town were straightforward. But we didn’t trust ourselves to remember which way to turn at which cornfield on the way back.

“What did Siri just say?” said my husband who was driving and not staring down at his phone which was programmed with a cheerful Aussie.

“He said to turn left at ‘four-thousand and six-hundred and fifty street,” I choked back my laughter. I figured that the length of the street sign alone would work well as a marker. The street sign was short, sweet and well-placed on the corner: 4650 Street.

Old paper maps from my childhood seem better in some ways; folding and unfolding them as a child was an entertaining puzzle. And wouldn't my father have preferred my know-it-all eight-year-old voice from the backseat to an automated voice from a phone, something that would have seemed right out of H. G. Wells.

But even on this trip, there were times we didn’t rely on Siri, especially when we saw a handwritten sign: “Farm fresh eggs.” We made a sharp turn into the driveway and spotted another sign “Drive on up and turn around to get your eggs.” The best sign was taped to the blue and white cooler: “Eggs inside. Thank you.”

By now, on our detour to get farm fresh eggs, Siri was squawking “Proceed to the route. Proceed to the route. Proceed to the route.” Imagine what we would have missed if we did proceed to the route.

When we were outside the car, walking on a trail without our phones, we relied on trail markers. Even then, one said to turn left, so we went right just to see where the path would take us and we saw a herd of deer along the creek.

There are days I wish life came with its own personal Siri or had a few more markers for me to follow. I could type in “heaven” as the end destination, hit go and then take the most direct, detour-free, least painful route to get there.

Instead, life comes with the Redeemer, who doesn’t need our help to program our journey to heaven. It was set before we were even created. Jesus doesn’t hand us the latest device and leave us to our own devices to figure things out. He gave us his Word so we can know him, love him and follow him.

Often, though, God diverts our path to discover things we'd miss with just a straightforward route. Along the way, we turn this way or that and find eggs or deer and maybe even a hurt Samaritan along the side of the path.

Jesus is the shepherd who guides us through detours of green pastures and dark valleys. He knows that the best route home to heaven might be a twisting, turning detour, which he delights in showing us that it was a smooth path after all. 

Jesus is better than Siri. He doesn’t just say to proceed to the route; he is the way, the only route, the truth, the path and the trail and the trail makers all in one, the life, taking us all the way home to heaven.

Finding God by Wallace Alcorn

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The fourth number in Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah” offers both a plaintive plea somehow to find the distant God and a reassuring answer on how to find him.

Though born Jewish, Mendelssohn was baptized Lutheran at age seven. Although his narrative is based on several incidents found in the books of Kings, he drew the exposition from other sections of the Old Testament. Our English text does not come from the King James Version, with which he may not have been familiar, but from the German Bible. However, the King James clearly reflects the text from which the composer worked.

He has his character Obadiah cry out as a tenor solo:

Oh, that I knew where I might find Him,
That I might even come before His presence.

For this, he seems to have in mind the story of Job. Eliphaz the Temanite had reasoned: “Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!” (Job 22:12, KJV) Then he challenged Job in his own presumptuous wisdom: “If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up. . . . For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.” (vs 23-26).

At this bleak reality, Job despaired. Despite his unshakable confidence in the purposes and will of God and his eventual recovery, there were dark moments in which God seemed inexplicably distant. Job could but cry desperately: “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!” (Job 23:3).

Mendelssohn found the biblical answer Job sought in two other Old Testament passages, and he put it this way:

If with all your heart ye truly seek Me,
Ye shall ever surely find Me,
Thus saith our God.

The composer seems to have found this, first, in the Deuteronomic instructions of Moses as he summarized the Law as to how the Israelites are to live when they enter into what God had promised. Moreover, God anticipated their failure so to live and Moses counseled that when they come to the point where they can no longer find God:

“But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” (Deuteronomy 4:29).

Second, centuries later the prophet Jeremiah addressed the Jews God had sent into exile in Babylon because they had effectively distanced themselves. The prophet sent a letter from Jerusalem to these exiles and prophesied that when the seventy years of discipline would be accomplished, and God would call them back to Jerusalem:

“Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12,13)

What God expects of us is not something of a successful search and rescue operation, but simply that we want to find him—and the willingness to be found of him. However, we may have estranged ourselves from God and however distant he may seem, God is not so hard to find. The Old Testament teaches this, and Mendelssohn recognized it.

The God we would seek has already found us. All we need do is to seek him with all our hearts—truly seek him with our whole being. Then we just look up and there he is, waiting to be found.

How Does Our Garden Grow? by Diane Jordan

in

Several years ago, a mom called and wanted the names of her child’s Bible school teachers. Oh, oh. What happened on Sunday? Turns out, on the way home from church that morning, her child asked what it meant to be a Christian, and how he could become one. This mom was sure that both College Church and her son’s Kids’ Harbor teachers were instrumental in preparing her child’s heart for God’s truth and for planting the seed of the gospel.

I’ve often thought that children’s ministry is similar to gardening. And as every good gardener knows, preparing the soil is crucial if you want to produce anything from roses to tomatoes to pumpkins. Just ask my daughter-in-law, one of the best gardeners I know.

I like to think that soil preparation begins in, appropriately enough, the nursery, where these young children have their first experience of church. There they are cared for and ministered to, and what is communicated to these sweet babies is that they are loved and accepted and valued by God and his people. (And if you stop by the church during the week with your sweet babies the same thing will be communicated.)

From the nursery, these now walking, talking young children with their distinct little personalities enter the preschool department, and soil prep digs a little deeper. In preschool the children learn that Jesus loves them, and that the Bible is God’s special book. Our goal is to encourage attitudes of love and reverence for God, his book and his house (and not to race down the ramp or climb on the railing).

Next is seed-planting time. In the elementary Bible school classes children are exposed to biblical truths such as the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. They learn that we are all sinners, separated from God, under his wrath, deserving punishment. But then the glorious truth of the gospel breaks in, as they begin to comprehend that Jesus came to die to take our punishment and our sin upon himself.

In God’s timing, the seed sprouts new life. The Holy Spirit takes the love, nurture and teaching that children receive both in the home and at church and uses it to bring children to the point of committing their lives to Jesus as Savior and Lord.

And the plants begin to blossom and grow. The children continue to be nurtured and taught in the home by their parents and at church by loving, godly leaders. They are challenged to grow in their faith, in the love and knowledge of the Lord, and in their obedience to him. They learn what it means to serve him with their lives.

Kids' Harbor exists to partner with parents to nurture, teach, and equip children to know, love and serve Jesus. We long for this ministry to produce a church that is deeply rooted and grounded in Christ and his Word. Our dream is that someday there will be a waiting list of volunteers wanting to serve in children’s ministries because the importance of this work is recognized.

The soil of many hearts is awaiting a gardener’s touch and care. And we still have classes waiting for adults to help grow our garden of young lives. You are welcome to join us in the field of children’s ministry alongside the Master Gardener and sow for the future. Pray as a new season is beginning.

Men of Tears by Wil Triggs

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I met Robert Nicholson a few years back at a conference on global persecution of Christians. He is the publisher and one of the editors of Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. He's a former marine, the founder and director of an engaging non-profit organization and a man who came across as articulate and ready to speak out on things that matter. I was impressed with his passion for suffering Christians as I heard him speak as part of a panel discussion and have taken to reading the journal.

So, it came as a surprise to me when he wrote in January 2019 of the last time he cried.

“I was finishing a tour of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem,” he begins, “when I came upon a massive room lined with shelves stacked floor to ceiling. Each shelf was crammed with books, and, on reading the placard, I realized that each book was filled with the names of those murdered in Hitler’s death machine. Shelf on shelf, the ghosts towered around me. Not until that moment had I comprehended the meaning of millions. My knees went weak. I wept.”

Having met and talked with Robert, I can say that he is not one who is prone to tears. But there he was weeping and writing about it.

This is not the norm. A New York Times article “It’s All Right to Cry, Dude,” observes “the ability to quash or conceal sadness or pain is a virtue long prized by stoics, yogis, monks, kung fu masters and American he-men heroes. It is a foundation of cool. Even in this seemingly nonjudgmental age, men who depart from the script will hear about it. Some will receive a cheer for defying stereotype. Some will be mocked. But male tears in the public sphere still make news.”

Holding it together remains important. Composure. Control.

Yet as I get older, I find myself dealing with tears more often. Maybe this is prized by yogis and kung fu masters, but I think Jesus has a different perspective.

This last year I wrote an email to Tom Paulsen that brought me to tears in the middle of writing it.

“Tom, the Pictorial Directories are finally done. These always take so long—longer than they should, but we always struggle to get them updated, and the company changed hands in the midst of this project.

“But when they finally arrived, I called up the list of people who helped greet those coming to get their photos taken.

“Well the name that is listed more than any other is Carole.” [Tom’s wife]

It’s at this point in the email that it happened. The email wasn’t for Tom, really; it was for his wife, Carole, who died suddenly just a few weeks after we finished the directory. It hit me in a fresh way when I saw her name on the list. She was just here, helping out. Then she was gone. So fast. And now, just this week, it’s been a year.

“So now I'm crying as I write this to you” I continued my email to Tom. “I want to say thank you. Thank you. Her faithful and good help meant a lot to me. This is such a hidden sort of thing, and she was faithful.

“God knows her good service. I just couldn't not reach out to you and express my thankfulness, and my prayers for you, too, friend.”

Maybe it’s the memory of a person who is gone, unexpectedly, shockingly, or a disappointment with a loved one whose faith has gone cold or saying goodbye to a friend who is moving away. It could even be one of those television commercials where the father comes home from the war as a surprise to his wife and children just in time for Christmas.

There's global tears and personal ones. And there is so much bad going on in the world—to be overwhelmed by bad things seems almost inevitable or we fall into cynicism or just cut ourselves off to keep ourselves composed.

Somehow I want to keep my heart soft to the needs of other people. And so sometimes these tears happen.

But there is a lesser known sort of tears.

David Helm, one of the pastors of Holy Trinity Church (our church plant in Chicago), is a passionate preacher. When he preached here before moving downtown (this was a long time ago), and when I heard him preach in more recent years, he is often overcome by the immensity of God’s Word and the unfathomable greatness of Christ, that his voice falters and the tears can fall even in the midst of preaching. I love that about Dave. I think his heart is a role model for the rest of us.

We are all confronted with things in life that are far beyond us. Perhaps there is nothing more beyond us than Jesus himself. Beyond us, yes, and also like us.

B.B. Warfield’s The Emotional Life of Our Lord chronicles the emotions of Jesus—his compassion, affection, anger and other common emotions we experience as humans. Jesus knows them not from afar, but from the core of his holy and righteous being.

Of the “Jesus wept” passage before Jesus raises Lazarus Warfield writes “The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its 'violent tyranny' as Calvin (on verse 38) phrases it. In Mary’s grief, he 'contemplates'—still to adopt Calvin’s words (on verse 33),—'the general misery of the whole human race' and burns with rage against the oppressor of men.”

Toward his conclusion, Warfield states, “When we observe him exhibiting the movements of his human emotions, we are gazing on the very process of our salvation: every manifestation of the truth of our Lord’s humanity is an exhibition of the reality of our redemption.”

When I consider Jesus, another kind of tear forms, not one of anger or sorrow or helplessness, but of wonder. To be without sin, yet mourn and weep, and then take all of it on himself at the cross. This, too, is far beyond us, but in a most wonderful and good, even glorious way. The cross of Jesus is also the most bare and intimate nearness of God—Son of God taking it all on himself and dying with words of forgiveness and paradise falling from his lips as he then commits his spirit into the hands of God himself.

And then.

When her eyes were open and she cried “Rabonni.” When they recognized him at the breaking of the bread. When the net suddenly filled with fish that morning and he knew who was standing on the shore. When Thomas touched him and knew. When their hearts were burning on the road with him as he opened the Scripture. When the prayers for release from prison were interrupted by the knock of the former prisoners at the door of the prayer meeting. Wait. What?

Tears of wonder.

Today, this day, has a wonder of its own. I don’t know what it is yet, but I pray for eyes to see, tears to shed if those should come, ears to hear.

If a television commercial can bring me to tears, why not this truth that’s beyond tears:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

No Strangers Here by Lorraine Triggs

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Water Tower Place was still a novelty when my mother and one of her friends drove from Detroit to Chicago to visit me. My flat mate and I happily dragged my mom and her friend to our favorite haunts—Marshall Field’s, Gino’s East, Stuart Brent Bookstore on Michigan Avenue (the crown jewel of Chicago bookstores, IMHO) and Garrett’s Popcorn. The personalized tour ended at Water Tower Place.

By that time, my mom was tired and assured us that she would be just fine sitting on the bench at the bottom of the escalators in the busy entrance to Water Tower Place. We waved to her as we rode the escalator up to the shops. Hours later, as we rode the escalator down, I noticed a woman who looked awfully like my mother talking to a couple of people like they were old friends. That couldn’t be my mom. She didn’t know a soul in the city.

Wrong.

“This is my daughter,” my mom exclaimed as soon as she saw me, and then introduced me to the other women by name, telling me where they each lived and a little bit of their stories. As we left with our goodwill ambassador in tow, the security guard called out, “Bye now, Grace, you come back and visit us anytime.”

Mom knew no strangers. In her later years, she relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, to be closer to my middle sister and her family. She moved into an apartment building and in time knew no strangers. We went to visit her. After we had been there for just a few minutes, there was a knock on the door from an older single lady.

Grace opens the door. Zona, the lady who lived downstairs, brought my mother her house plants to nurse them back to health. In she comes. She hugs us and tells us how much she loves Mom. Zona drinks my mom's coffee over Bible verses, angel food cake, summer fruits.

Knock knock. Grace opens the door. Bill, the handyman with tattoos on his arms and a handlebar mustache, comes to happily repair her shower head. While she waits for him to finish, she makes his lunch.

Knock, knock, knock, knock. Rosie lived across the hall. Grace opens the door. Later she explains to us that Rosie "wasn't quite right, but she's okay." Rosie felt free to knock on Mom's door at any time of the day or night. Mom was always there to listen to her fears or dreams or imaginations. Rosie left always feeling loved.

The young family in the building next door adopted Mom into their family because they lived far away from their family.

The other day ago, Debbie, a childhood friend from my childhood church, posted on Facebook how Paul in Romans 16:1-16 listed name by name many people who touched his life. She decided to do the same. The first name she listed? Grace Lustig, my mother; the second name was another Grace.

These two Graces called themselves, "Abundant Grace" and "Amazing Grace." My mother claimed Abundant Grace because of a few extra pounds she had over Amazing Grace.

In some ways it really didn't matter. Both Graces exhibited abundance and amazing grace to rowdy children, to a newly arrived mother from Russia and to a formidable Mrs. Mac (whose name also made Debbie's post and would also make my list if I wrote one).

My oldest sister who lives inside the beltway of the District of Colombia is very much like my mom. She has a knack for collecting people from down the street, in the suburbs and on Capitol Hill—strangers, really, until they enter her home (which is also where her Brethren assembly meets). There, they break bread together—either her homemade bread over a meal or in remembrance of the One, who had nowhere to lay his head.

It’s in the remembrance of Jesus and his blood spilled and body broken that strangers and aliens become fellow citizens with saints and members of God’s household. It’s grace that helps us see strangers and aliens as potential family members. It's grace to remember that we, too, were aliens, who needed the same invitation extended to us when we were far off. And it's grace that will bring us home again.

We all could use with a visit from grace these days. Abundant and amazing.