204. Life and happiness
We could still hear today the message Moses receives from the Lord:
“I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.” Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 15
God proposes to all: “life and prosperity”. What comes at the beginning is life. Life is a gift of God’s Love and what’s complementary is happiness. Happiness is lived in the present. Happiness is to know we’re Loved. But above all, happiness comes from its source, which is God.
Happiness comes from the Lord. Nobody else has given it. Happiness is the fruit of God’s Love. It is to be shared and received between people.
It’s the ultimate choice of our faith. We have the choice between “life and prosperity, or death and doom”. Happiness is in God. God has nothing to do with evil, death and doom. He offers us Love. It is we who can either follow the road to happiness or descend the slope into evil.

Unlike welcoming God’s Love, the result is the misfortune that leads to death. Death is the gradual response that leads to refusing God. It’s our responsibility to choose one or the other, life or death, good or evil, truth or lies, forgiveness or hatred, joy or despair, etc.
The choice seems easy, but according to our experience, we know that sometimes we have wandered in the wrong at the expense of good.
Under the ashes of misery we see, there is often the embers of Love that we no longer see. In this world that too often proposes a culture of death in all its forms, we struggle to find embers under the ashes.
We are created to be the bearers of embers, to ignite the world of God’s Love. This ember, we carry in our heart, so that others discover “life and prosperity” which is suggested to us.
Jesus also speaks in the same sense:
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke, chapter 9, verse 23
This cross is very light when we know about the Love we bring to humanity. For people who do not know that the cross is Love, it can seem heavy. Heaviness comes with lack of love, either from others or from us.
The cross of Love that Jesus offers us is much easier to bear than misfortune. And the more we share God’s Love, the more our existence becomes meaningful. Let’s give misfortune, evil, poverty to Jesus and live fully with the embers of the Love of God.
Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas