Where is your happy place? Where do you go to simply relax and recharge your batteries? Is it on top of a mountain or by the sea? Is it in a garden or is it Disney? Quite often we will announce that we are going to our “happy place’. By that we mean a special place where we find joy, contentment, excitement, and peace; a place where we can relax and rejuvenate our beings. Maybe that happy place is where we go to ponder or escape life’s troubling issues. We go to this place to reconnect with our family when the cares of earth press down on us. This year has left many people struggling to find a place where they can once again be happy and set aside the fears of covid, racial tensions, an upcoming election, and all of the other atrocities we have endured this year. Sometimes, we have several happy places.
At the lowest point in his life, Jesus went to his happy place. We went to Gethsemane to talk to his Father. He took some of his closest earthly friends with him. (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46; John 18:1)
After today, there are 20 Sundays left in 2020. God knew we would need each other and set up His church so that we could join with each other amidst our fears and support each other, lift up each other, pray for each other.
Just like everyone else, I have claimed some physical spot on this earth as my happy place; sometimes it was a mountain, sometimes the beach or the woods. Sometimes it was as exciting as Disney or as simple as Crawfordville, Florida or Harlan, Kentucky, as long as I was with my family. But I have a better happy place than all of those combined. I’m a member of God’s family and as such, I have a place in His home. Whether I am home or on vacation, I can join with God’s people, my family, to worship Him. This is my true happy place. This happy place prepares me for being with my forever family in my forever home with my forever God; forever.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” Psalm 122:1
Where is your happy place?
-Rhonda Harper