Better than a “happy meal” …

Americans take their happiness seriously.

How many times have you heard a parent say, “All I want is for my kids to be happy”?

And if we’re honest, the decisions we make often are based on what would make us the happiest.

If you asked many people what it is that makes them happy, it probably wouldn’t take long for several of them to include food or a favorite meal in their list. Interestingly, it happens to be some food that a corporation markets around the world as being a “happy meal,” as Dr. Fred Penney describes for us:

The McDonalds “Happy Meal” might be the most famous meal in all the world.

It’s a meal for a kid that’s served at McDonalds restaurants that promises to make them happy — at least for a few fleeting minutes!

In the mid-1970s, a MacDonald’s restaurant in Guatemala offered a hamburger, small fries, and a small sundae specifically for kids.

The idea was eventually brought to the attention of McDonald’s head office who then asked Bob Bernstein to develop the idea further. Bernstein thought marketing a meal for kids would make everyone happier. Kids could now get a packaged meal all their own instead of just picking at their parent’s food.

Bernstein branded it “the happy meal” — meals designed especially for kids and featuring a toy. Happy kids meant happy parents, too!

Who hasn’t gone to MacDonald’s looking for that elusive thing called happiness? If only finding happiness was that easy!

If happiness is that important to us, perhaps we would be better served turning in our Bibles to Psalm 1, from which we learn that it’s not a meal that is the “secret” to happiness, it’s holiness:

“Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do,” Psalm 1:1-3.

Other Bible versions translate the beginning of Psalm 1:1, as “blessed,” like this from the NIV, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers …”

In verse 1, the Hebrew word אַשְׁרֵי (pronounced “ashrei”) can be understood as happy, but it has a deeper meaning than simply experiencing fleeting good mood; the word translated as “blessed” is actually plural, implying a fullness or abundance of blessings.

As Penney mentioned earlier, your favorite meal might bring a few fleeting moments of happiness, but if you really want to experience an abundant and lasting happiness — with “lasting” meaning eternal! — then holiness should be your life’s pursuit.

Nothing will make you happier than to be freed from the clutches of sin and made a new creation in Christ. Such happiness will transcend into a realm of joy you can experience through all of life’s ups and downs, and on into life everlasting.

That’s much better than you can ever experience from any kind of “happy meal.”

Scotty