Happiness is lots of things, but primarily three:

* Happiness is enjoying living with yourself. It's the art of 'being yourself'. Robert Louis Stevenson once said, 'To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.' No person is on earth by accident.

* Happiness is loving service to others. Confucius wrote:
'Those who wish the good of others have already secured their own'. Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work among the destitute dying, the 'poorest of the poor'. A highly educated Mauritian girl entered her order in India, and for three hours she lovingly cleaned an old woman who'd been found in a dust-bin, where she'd been left to die. 'She came home radiating joy,' said Mother Teresa. "I have been touching the body of Christ for three hours," she told me'.

* The third important relationship is, of course, with God. Over the next few days we will look more closely at this aspect, as we study Psalm 32.

Enable me, Lord, to receive the ancient wisdom that happiness is not attained by trying hard to be happy; it's a by-product of doing other worthwhile things; it is 'serendipitous' - the art of making happy discoveries while looking for something else. Happiness is where we find it, rarely where we seek it. Amen.