Two children

Romans 8:1-6

            Let us imagine you have two children. One grows up with a penchant for art and pursues a career in an artistic field. Your other child seems to have a head for business and strives for success in that realm.  Perhaps it is cliche, but I can see a struggling artist child and and an extremely wealthy business child. While I could add to the cliche more by saying many a business person never said on their dying bed, " i should have spent more time at the office".  After it is all said and done, what we want for our children is to be happy. Happy rich or happy poor, as long as they are happy. Sadly, we often equate happiness with the money side of things.  Just ask that question if you could of Robin Williams or Christina Onassis or the countless rich people who drag themselves to their therapist each week.

           The truth is, happiness and fulfillment almost always is an independent achievement or blessing. So no matter if you are rich or poor, you can find happiness.  I have experienced both realms and witnessed both realms.

           If we are to instill in our children and by extension, even ourselves, or perhaps more importantly - ourselves, we must learn what makes us truly happy, truly fulfilled and gives purpose to our life so it has meaning.  This is not really the stuff of religion per se. It is the stuff of God and our innate being and sometimes that corresponds to religion and many times it does not.

         When I realized I was gay there was great joy in my heart. There was intense happiness that I could at last identify such an integral part of who I am.  I suppose I could have pursued a fleeting form of further happiness in an endless strand of encounters. I was graced enough to realize that while I was happy to be gay, that in itself did not give me complete happiness. Happiness it seems to me comes in being all that God created me to be. I think that is true of all of us.

         Seek happiness and wholeness in who you are and love for our creator. 

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.