Consider the following

Smart people aren't happy, well it seems that's what we're to believe. Rich people aren't happy, funny people are generally tragically sad, Howie Mandell? I was listening to Howie on the radio a couple of months ago and wanted to cry because his life is so decimated. The other place people aren't happy is bars. I have been to many said establishments over my tenure as a non-minor, and with the exclusion of,  in some places, the common warmth one finds with a friend, bars are cold, sad places, again there are exceptions, I'm speaking of the general local bar... just give it a try drive into a random town on a tuesday night and tell me how happy the people are?

Sad is an indicator.

I was thinking about wilted trees, in the heat of summer, they don't look appealing, they look tired and sick.  I was thinking about the evidence of happiness as evidence to the right kind of life. Even in the most secular sense, the neo-marxist is pursuing happiness through his ideology, not necessarily cement-block housing. Wall street protesting believing that if they, or "the people" had more money they would be happy.

I had a dream last night where someone said, I just get hung up on the technicalities of the faith and it shuts down the whole thing. I responded, "the older I get the more I recognize the wonder and fulfillment of the simple elements and am drawn away from the complexities of the faith."

The nice grandma in the little church who is happy, is evidence that she is doing something right. Not just morally right but right according to her very nature and the way she was ultimately designed. It's funny, she is kind of like a tree planted by streams in living water that yields it's fruit in season, who's leaf does not wither in the fever heat of summer.

We live in the fever heat and should so expect the world to be wilted or rather conducive to wilting. We point to lots of factors, like rulers and religion, collateral people and coercive pressures or whatever.

I am thinking about a friend that doesn't love Jesus any more, and thinking about our last conversation, his soul as a hedonistic disaster, rabidly seeking pleasure to make him happy. I remember not too long ago when he was happy, pursuing the things of God. Aquinas said one of the ways we know 'God's way' and 'law' is good, is because it makes us happy. The great lie of the enemy is that God's way makes us sad and is really a ***shabby rip-off of real life. enter snake stage left.

But I guess that's only for old ladies.