We totally misunderstand what it means to be alive when we think of our lives as time we can use in search of rewards and pleasure. Frantically and in growing frustration, we search through our days, our years, looking for the reward, for the success that will make our lives worthwhile, like the security guard looking through the trash in the wheelbarrow for something of value and all the while missing the obvious answer. When you have learned how to live, life itself is the reward.

People are so busy chasing happiness- if they would slow down and turn around, they would give it a chance to catch up with them.

Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.

We don't just struggle with want; we struggle with blessing as well.

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. 1

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? … But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Logan Pearsall Smith packed a lot of wisdom into a few words when he said: "There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

The cross means the acceptance of limitation on desire. Without establishing this for yourself, there can only be frustration and worse, for you simply cannot satisfy desire.

Our desires are the roots of the self-life in all of us. And until we, in conjunction with the grace of God, have made an intentional decision not to allow our desires to be the center of our lives, we can never have the kind of faith that will lead us to the life of abundant sufficiency in God.

Envy and greed starve on a steady diet of thanksgiving.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.