One of the biggest highlights of a birthday party is when the “birthday” person is asked to make a wish and blow out the candles. What’s ironic is that we never really get a chance to find out if the person’s wish came true. This is because the “wishers” are often informed that it’s bad luck to tell others what they wished for. However, if we were somehow able to audibly replay the birthday wishes said in their hearts, we would more than likely find a common denominator consisting of maybe a new home, a new car, a million dollars, or other “things” that we think would make us happy.

All to often we seek material possessions in our pursuit of happiness, which causes us to fall short of our anticipated feeling.  This is because in most cases we don’t prepare ourselves to handle what we wish for because we are not prepared to handle what we presently have. Why would one wish for a new car, when they are not taking care of the one we have? Or, how does one expect to handle large sums of money, when they are poorly managing what’s presently in their bank account? It just doesn’t make sense!

Our attitude towards life, and how we treat our present possessions will ultimately determine how we will react to, and feel about, something of greater value. Therefore, if you are not happy with what you have, you should determine the reason why before you wish for more. You could very well find out that it’s largely your negative outlook on life, and not what you don’t have, that is causing your unhappiness.

So, the next time you find yourself preparing to blow out candles on a cake, remember: our pursuit of happiness can be one of the shortest journeys ever taken if we would wish to improve who we are, before wishing to improve what we have.

Pastor Corey