Happy Surrender
Psalm 32; Matthew 5:3
The Greeks called Cyprus the Isle of Happiness. It was so beautiful and lush that one would neither want nor need to leave if one were fortunate enough to live there. They named it “Makaria,” lit. ‘the happy place.’ And that name is the word with which Jesus begins each Beatitude. As we start, this sounds quite promising! But the first Beatitude finds us shipwrecked on our way to the mythical Isle of Happiness. If we listen, though, and listen carefully we will be carried on the waves of Christ’s righteousness to a place far better than Makaria where real happiness lasts not for a lifetime but forever.