Happiness Which Money Can’t Buy

by Dr. Harold Sala

“Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!” -Psalm 32:11

In my file on “happiness” is a yellowed piece of paper, the inexpensive kind of paper which little children use in school. It’s been there now for almost a quarter of a century, and the edges are frayed and soiled.

On the paper is an essay written in a child’s hand by a nine-year-old girl who happened to be my daughter. It reads, “Money can’t buy happiness. Or love. Sometimes money can’t buy the things that you like best. Money can’t buy the kind of things that mother makes. Money can’t buy good friends. Money can’t buy a baby.

Or a pair of pretty eyes. Money can’t buy the moon or the sky. But most of all money can’t buy the love of God for us.”

Talk about wisdom coming from the mouth of a child. Scores of the world’s wealthiest people have never learned what Bonnie wrote. Prior to his death, J. Paul Getty, the oil man, was described as one of the world’s richest men.

In an interview he told the press that he “finds it hard work being a billionaire.” He said, “I always wish I had a better personality, that I could entertain better, converse more intelligently. I’m always worried of being dull.”

There’s a Jewish proverb that says, “When you are rich, you always tell funny jokes and you sing well, too.” But the fact is that money cannot buy happiness.

In the event that you have been following this current series, you’ve heard me say that happiness, as most define it, is the world’s counterfeit of Christian joy which transcends a happiness based on possessions and circumstances. Does this mean though that godly people cannot be happy, or happy people cannot be spiritual? Not at all.

Real happiness is a by-product of joy, something which comes forth like a bubbling spring from the reservoir of joy in the heart. But be very clear, this kind of happiness comes from within, not without. Its source is joy, not material gain.

This was the kind of happiness which Jesus had in his ministry on earth–not the kind of happiness which the world seeks. This kind of happiness is not a goal, something which you have when certain things happen to you. It is something you stumble across, something that you discover doing the will of God for your life.

One of the most intriguing women I ever met was an elderly woman who lived in poverty. She was crippled with arthritis and confined to her bed. I met “old Mrs. Cason,” as we boys called her, in an old cotton mill town near the college I attended. We would often take groceries to her, and I remember that when we put a carton of milk in her icebox, it was often barren.

Was she happy? Not as the world views happiness. Having your hands crippled with arthritis or your body twisted grotesquely is nothing which anyone can be happy about, yet this woman would say, “Oh, God has been so good to me!”

 ”How is that?” we sometimes asked, and she would say, “He’s sent you to help me.” And “I sense His presence right here in my room.” That happiness was the by-product of having God in her life and joy in her heart. It’s the real thing.

If you really want happiness, don’t search for it. But you’ll find it as you make God’s will your goal in life. The God-dimension brings joy and its by-product, happiness, which only the children of God can fully know or understand.

It’s all part of the joy which comes by knowing that God, not circumstances, is really in control of your life. This is the only kind of real happiness which endures. And this, money cannot buy.

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