It's easy to be happy when everything's going right--you ace your geometry test, your crush notices your new hair cut, your parents tell you it's time to go car shopping. But if your happiness is tied to stuff that's only temporary, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. So what's the alternative?
Find your happiness in the only thing that will last. That's what a twelfth-century monk named Bernard said. In one of his writings, On Consideration, he encouraged readers to find joy in Christ alone rather than things like the opinions of others and material possessions.
You have begun to see how easily you are unsettled when others irritate you, and how gross offenses nearly drive you off track. I want to help you understand why this is so . ...
It is our attachment to the things of this world that is the problem. We feel such a drawing to people and possessions, hoping they will give us the security and love we need. When they fail to fill our soul's deepest needs we are confused. We feel such affection for these people, these things--but they do not love us back as much as we need to be loved. Our own body betrays us, because in the presence of these objects of desire we feel some measure of comfort. But never enough. Thus we are attached as if by ropes to things that pull our souls down into the miry clay of earth.
Those who are stuck in this rut may come away for a time of spiritual reflection. They get a glimpse of the rest and peace that can be theirs when they relinquish their worries and attachments to God. But. ... they fail to recognize the Source of their spirit's life--they fail to recognize that all of life flows from our full embrace of [Christ] alone.
They go back to their attachments to things that can never give them life within.
Source: Christianity Today | Ignite Your Faith - - Amber Penney
