If it’s true that things will not make us happy why are we so slow to learn the truth? It’s so easy to think this or that will some how fill the hole in me and I will find fulfillment. We should figure out early in life that stuff just doesn’t make you happy. Driving home from Austin Saturday night I heard a song titled To Much Stuff. It may have been the truest statement to ever come from the speakers of a car. Stuff just won’t get the job done. Jimmy Buffets words are true also:

I used to rule my world from a payphone

And ships out on the sea

But now times are tuff

And I’ve got too much stuff

Can’t explain it for the life of me.

Having performed my share of weddings (How in the world can you “perform” a wedding? Shouldn’t it be I’ve suffered through my share of weddings? I guess this would include everyone who was present and not just the preacher. Officiated doesn’t work either. We need a new word) I find them to be one of the places you see this disease most clearly. When the bride and groom speak their vows, more often then not what I hear them saying is not the promise to love honor and obey but something along the lines of, I am a great black hole of emotional need and you are now charged with making me happy! Not only can things not make us happy, people can’t make us happy either. While relationships are important (not essential, you know what I mean Matt) they are not the source of fulfillment in our lives.

Or are they?

People can’t make us happy but relationships can fill some holes. My life would be much less if it were not for my wife and kids. The vast majority of the joy I experience in life is experienced in relationship with others. I think the key is that these people I am in relationship with don’t make me happy but the relationship its self is a source of happiness. The being in community provides something I need because I’m designed in the image of God who has and always will dwell in community.

So you can give up on that house, car, boat, dress, vacation, etc making you happy but don’t give up on the relationships you have and the ability to share happiness in them.