HAPPY NEW YEAR!
“Why Many Americans May Not Have A Happy New Year”
Ecclesiastes 3:11-13
Jan. 1, 2006 – New Year’s Day
Rev. Wm. A. Huegel
Wallingford FBC
Happy New Year!
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. Eccl. 3:11-13
This text follows the famous verses that declares there is “A Time for Everything”
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
The text goes on to say 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God.
Repeat: 12 “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live”. There’s nothing wrong with being happy. So, Happy New Year!
After all, we are Americans and the U.S. Constitution guarantees us right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Whatever makes us happy – whether that’s the pursuit of a particular religion, or involvement with the political process, or working, marrying, or traveling. Whatever that is that makes us happy, we have the right to go after it. The book of Ecclesiastes says there is nothing better than to be happy and to do good while we live. Being happy and doing good seem intertwined, however. There is no sense here that we can be happy at the expense of other people. We need to do good in the process of seeking to be happy.
It is traditional for us to wish each other a Happy New Year every January 1st. As your pastor, I do indeed wish you that. I pray that your life will be filled with contentment, prosperity, peace, and joy. I hope that you will find some measure of happiness in 2006.
There was a mix of happiness and unhappiness in 2005. We had a number of Hurricanes, devastating tornadoes, an overwhelming Tsunami Wave that hit parts of Indonesia and nearby countries. The Hurricane force winds slammed against the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi and Florida. Tornadoes ripped apart various towns of the mid-West. I hope this year is a lot happier.
It seems that some won’t be having a very “Happy New Year”. Mr. Barna quotes a 24 year old man from Washington who complains, “Look, I’m going to age in a world where crime, disease, poverty, rotten politics, incompetent government, unethical and insincere religion, environmental decay and lousy public education are the norm. … He goes on to say, “I’m not excited about the future, because it’s not a future worth being excited about.” (p 28) This man is from the prosperous state of Washington. Pastor Lubin. I wonder how he would feel if he were living out his life in Haiti? He doesn’t sound very happy.
It’s strange though. Americans and Europeans should have a very Happy New Year indeed. I have been reading a very fascinating book. I’ll be sharing some of my findings with you this morning. It is called "The Progress Paradox - How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse."
Some things might get a lot better for a few of us. For example, if you are very lucky, you might be able to own your own airplane. More and more that is a luxury, not for the super-rich, the millionaires, but simply for the well-off oil-field workers and mid-career professionals.
Now one of the problems with owning your own airplane is the question of where do you go? What do you do? After all, the romance of sitting behind the controls of your own personal aircraft can wear off after a while. Well, you’ll be glad to know that someone has thought of that. There now exists fly-in restaurants. You can buy a book entitled, The $100 Hamburger : A Guide to Pilots’ Favorite Fly-In Restaurants, Second Edition (It retails for $25.00, but you can get it on Amazon.com for a mere $16.47)
(after all, it costs about a $100.00 an hour to operate a small plane). You can fly-in, taxi up to the restaurant, get a bite to eat, and then with full stomachs you can fly off into the sunset.
In fact, according to this book, there are fly-in communities. Entire housing developments near Fort Worth, Texas and near Daytona Beach, Florida, for example, have (not drive ways, but ) taxi-ways leading right up to your door. Some houses have hangars, instead of garages. A popular option in Pecan Plantation, near Fort Worth, Texas for example is the 4,500 square-foot hangars - sized for two cars and two airplanes. If you can afford all that, it may be a very Happy New Year for you.
Now, if fly-in restaurants and fly-in communities are not what would make your year a happy one, you might consider golf-course living. Today, in the U.S. there are at least two hundred housing developments built around golfing fairways. Many residents own their own golf carts, park them in the garage, and ride directly from the back porch door to the clubhouse. Golf-course living, with club memberships are typically included in the home purchase. These beautiful homes run somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 - certainly not cheap, but within the reach of tens of millions of Americans.
This author did mention that it can get a bit clumsy trying to explain to someone who lives in a third world country, like Haiti, that one of the problems in America is trying to figure out where to park your twin propeller airplane, your golf cart, or your lovely boat for that matter. But his point is that while these things are obviously expensive, they are none the less, within the reach of a lot of Americans who are not millionaires or billionaires, like Bill Gates, and who are not oil well tycoons, but rather by people who think of themselves as privileged, but rather average.
Owning your own private motorized boat, or even a sailing boat, by the way, was once the privilege of dukes and industrialists. Now, it is common for the average working man to own his own boat and many own a vacation home where they can use this boat throughout the summer months. In fact, so many average people own pleasure boats that docking space is short in many areas, while marinas have become the "marina industry" complete with its own marina lobby group. And of course you can buy the “Hungry Boaters Guide” so you can find those places where you can sail right up to the dock and enjoy an elegant dinner without ever stepping foot on land.
Even if some of these things are out of reach for some of you, never-the-less, it is very likely that things are a lot better for you than they were for your grand-father, for example.
Just think about transportation. Most of you adults who are gainfully employed own automobile. In fact, if you are typical, and if you have 3 licensed drivers in your family, there are at least two cars in your garage or driveway. Your grandfather’s family was likely to have felt very lucky if they owned one. Today, there are 100 auto trips for every one bus or subway trip across America according to the American Public Transit Association.
Things really are better. Consider the house you live in. 50 years ago, one was fortunate if he had a room of his own. As a child, I had to share a bedroom with an older brother, until he finally moved out. You can’t really compare our way of living with those in third world countries, but one of the things that always impresses people who go to the poor bateys of the D.R. with us is to learn that a family of 5-10 people may live in the one-room shacks that we see there. But today, the average family of 2.6 people lives in 5.3 rooms. That is, we each have two rooms of our own. By the way, when an American thinks of a house to live in, he thinks of one that has heat and air-conditioning in every room. That was prohibitively expensive, just a generation ago. Your grand-mother certainly did not think in those terms and your parents probably did not grow up with that.
A century ago, the rich lived in heated houses, rode in carriages, traveled the world, enjoyed unlimited food and wine, had access to physicians, attained college educations, attended the theater for entertainment, and if engaged in gainful work, did so in a comfortable office. None of these experiences was standard for the average person.
Consider the ability to travel. Today, 25 million people take overseas vacations every year - the majority of those travelers think of themselves as people of average means. In the year 2002, 612 million Americans (70% of the population) take airplane trips to go somewhere. 50 years ago, those who flew in airplanes were considered to be members of the "jet set". Today 70% of us fit that category.
Walk into a grocery store. The average American now has the means of buy fruit, flown in from California or South America that was once considered exotic and simply out of reach for the ordinary person. Most people can afford fresh flowers flown in from Brazil, Mexico, or some other place once thought of us exotic. We can purchase meats and eat the meat of our choice 7-days a week. We now have a diet once available only to kings, emperors and powerful political dignitaries. We eat a lot better than our parents did when they were young. In fact, the average American can afford to have someone else cook her food for her. The typical American eats four restaurant meals per week.
We have much better medical care, When I was a kid I can only remember going to the doctor a couple of times – and that was related to some kind of injury. But when my children were young, I took them to the hospital to help relieve a mere earache. Most of us have ready availability to anti-biotics and pain-relievers that were simply unavailable a mere century ago.
We have a lot more free time. In 1850 the average working man worked 66 hours per week. Today, it’s 42 hours. We have a lot more free time and a lot more money to enjoy the free time than say 50 years ago.
Here’s the summary of it all. According to the book Mapping Human History, Steve Olson estimates that of the 80 billion humans that have walked on the face of the earth (since Adam and Eve), the men and women of the United States and the European Union alive today, live better than 99.4 % of the human beings who ever existed. In fact, the Average Americans and Europeans live better than the royalty of history.
So, Happy New Year! By all standards, Americans should be the happiest people who ever lived. But, the amazing thing is we’re not. In fact, Gregg Easterbrook,s book, “The Progress Paradox” has a chapter entitled: “More of Everything Except Happiness”, he says, the trend line for per-capita income, real income, longevity, home size, cares per driver, phone calls made annually, trips taken annually, highest degree earned, IQ Scores, and just about every objective indicator of social welfare has trended upward on a pretty much uninterrupted basis for two generations.
But the trend line for happiness has been flat for 50 years. That is to say that the average person is no happier. In fact the trend line for those who consider themselves as “very happy” actually takes a nose-dive downward. In fact, Adjust for population growth, ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from unipolar depression or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than people did half a century ago. Americans and Europeans have ever more of everything except happiness.
Marriages are more unhappy. Divorce rate was under 10% 100 years ago. Today, it is nearly 50%. Young people are apparently unhappy. A mere 50 years ago, almost no one considered their life so unhappy that they needed to relieve the pain by taking an illegal drug. But today, drug addiction is at nearly epidemic proportions. Other addictions such as alcohol, gambling, and pornography are also alarmingly high. Of course, if you need such stimulates to make you happy it can be assumed that life is rather boring and unhappy without them.
The researcher/pollster, George Barna wrote a book entitled “Why Do People Feel So Bad?” He writes that Americans are desperately lonely, and that we cover it up by keeping busy – a whirlwind of activity that tires us physically, occupies us mentally, and consumes our resources shamelessly (p. 22-23).
He goes on to say that “Drug abuse is on the rise again, getting a chemical high has become a higher priority than coping with reality. Alcohol abuse, once common to the adult population, has spread downward to junior high age.” (P. 23)
A 34-year-old California woman admits, “I simply cannot tolerate the garbage that comes through so many of today’s rap songs. These songs preach hatred, violence, sexual abuse, profanity, immorality, a jungle existence…. They are simply mean-spirited…” (it’s hard for me to argue with that.)
Evidently the good life in which a person and fly off to the nearest fly-in restaurant and in which one can own a 500,000 dollar condo on a golf course hasn’t reached everyone. A 17-year-old from NYC says, “It’s awful. You can’t sleep through the night here, with the sirens and the shouting and the gunshots all the time. I dream of escaping from this place. But I don’t know where I’d go…. A lot of my girlfriends have already had babies. A lot of the boys from school aren’t around no more because they’re in jail for drugs or for some stupid crime they did. Just about everyone of us has been raped or had an abortion or been held up.”
A naturalized citizen who came to America from Hungary says, “When I came to this country, I was excited to be an American and to be with Americans. I looked at your country and felt it was the best in the world. … But now I think differently. I talk to a lot of people when I drive them in my taxi. I am amazed at what I hear. I learn a lot.
“Americans don’t have much real faith in God. This surprised me. I thought when the tough times come, Americans make it okay by praying to God and being connected with Him. But this is not the case. Not many people pray. People here think they can do it by themselves. This saddens me, because I am a man of faith. I know I cannot do it except by the grace and power of God.”
I think Greg Easterbrook has it right when he writes about “The Progress Paradox – How life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.”
Let me go back to my text: Eccl. 3:12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. The problem is that many Americans who are in hot pursuit of happiness have no clue about how to get it. The writer of our text offers one clue. “There is nothing better…than to be happy and do good while (we) live”. Doing good is tied in with this notion of happiness.
I don’t in anyway mean to either unnecessarily flatter or embarrass Pastor Lubin Beaucejour, who is originally from Haiti, but I think he’s one of the happiest men I know. He’s not one of the richest. His wife will say an “amen” to that. He doesn’t really have a job that pays him anything. His church is small. The mission he serves can hardly raise enough money to pay his telephone bills. (I know, my wife works for the BEM treasurer.) Some people give to him so he and his family don’t starve and God meets their needs. But he’s a happy man – for two reasons.
1. One is that he is dedicated to going forth doing good. He has just returned from Haiti having fed 600 children a wonderful Christmas dinner. He is dedicated to feeding the spiritually and the physically hungry of this world. He simply does a lot of good. “There is nothing better for us than to be happy and do good while we live”. Pastor Lubin doesn’t have time to worry about crime, disease, poverty, rotten politics, incompetent government, unethical and insincere religion, environmental decay and lousy public education. Coming from Haiti, he’s used to that. His philosophy is that he’d change it if he could, but until them, he’s just going to go forth doing whatever good he can do.
2. There is another reason why he’s happy. It’s the same reason many of you are happy.
He has found the true source of happiness. It has nothing to do with airplanes, or yachts, or golf courses, or big houses, or with gourmet meals. He has skipped all of that and has gone right to the source. When you go to the source of all happiness, then you’ll be happy despite your circumstances and despite your possessions. The source of true happiness, is in knowing and serving God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ecclesiastes 2:26
To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness,
Matthew 25:21
"His master replied, ’Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
I think there is a better word in the Bible than happiness. It’s the word Joy.
Psalm 5:11
But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy.
Psalm 19:8
The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
Psalm 68:3
But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.
Matthew 13:44
[ The Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl ] "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
John 15:11
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,
Galatians 5:22
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
It’s my prayer that you will have a Happy New Year in 2006.
- Not because you automatically become rich.
- Not because you are so privileged you can taxi up to your 4,500 square foot hanger and park your new Cesna Piper Cub air plane.
- Not because you can eat out at least four times a week.
- Not because you can go the theater and be entertained any time you want to.
But because you have found the source of true joy and happiness. It’s found in knowing Jesus. It’s found in doing good. It’s found in the kind of life that is so rich in the things that matter, that when it ends, the Master will say to you, “Well done, you good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”
Let us pray! Oh Lord, you are our joy! Our peace! Our happiness! Help us to share the joy of knowing you, with a desperately lonely and unhappy world. Amen.
