Happiness is very much in the news at the moment. The National Wellbeing Survey is now under way to measure our quality of life, and an initiative to create a happier society ‘Action for happiness’ has just been launched.

In their search for what makes us happy, the experts not surprisingly conclude that it’s not being rich or beautiful – what a relief! My father used to say, and it’s probably not original, that contentment lies not in getting what you want, but wanting what you have, and that certainly fits with what an American University research found, namely that grateful people are 25% happier than ingrates.

Amongst the so-called ‘secrets of contentment’ published recently in a newspaper’s weekend supplement were altruism and having a belief system. Since our own belief system is based on an altruistic approach to life we should be happy indeed and remind ourselves of where the recipe for happiness can be found, not in the research papers of University psychologists, but rather in Matthew Chapter 5, where Jesus, to quote my bible commentary, ‘turns ordinary human ideas about happiness upside down… the truly happy ones are those who recognise the spiritual poverty of self-reliance and learn to depend wholly on God‘.

Vron Walmsley