Home Happiness
“Go thy way,” so says the Preacher (Eccl. 9, 7), “eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.”
And this he says not once, but every time comes back to it again. “For a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat and to drink, and to be merry; for that shall abide with him of his labor all the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun” (8, 15).
Many a pious man, who is spiritually disposed, takes offense at this utterance, among Moderns as well as among Orthodox, even though, from reverence for the Scripture, many Orthodox people would not openly confess it.
What Jesus said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,” addresses the heart, that seeks God; but not so this interpretation of life, which is sensual at heart, and which ends in eating and drinking.
And of course, if this were the sense and the purport of what the Preacher says, every child of God would have to oppose the Preacher, and the whole book would have to be put out of Scripture.
But such is not the sense of the Preacher.
He has in view something altogether different, something which, real Christians of all lands, can so well understand.
He had a knowledge of men, and his look went deep into the human heart. And he saw with others, and experienced with himself, that our heart does not incline to esteem properly, what our portion in life is, the lot appointed to us, the talent entrusted to us, but continually stretches out the hand after what is more, and higher and less ordinary.
He had observed what endless treasures of life’s happiness, which had been given of God to the children of men, were thereby lost. And against this willful destruction of one’s own happiness of life, he enters his protest, admonishing every one, that he should take pleasure in the ordinary, everyday life, and have an eye for the treasure of life’s happiness, which that ordinary life contains.
Always to be at home, never to have any change, just ordinary living, is what every growing youth, and every young woman, oh, so easily looks down upon from the heights.
There is nothing to it, it bores, it makes one dull and doting.
No, this tameness of existence must be ended. What we want must be sought outside. In what is uncommon. In what is extra. In what is not of everyday recurrence.
Such is the call that is abroad. Till the booty found in the uncommon, disappoints more bitterly than the common. And in the end, weary of life, one has no more pleasure either in the everyday concerns, nor in what is uncommon.
One had bread and wanted pastry. And the end is, that both pastry and bread nauseate.
And against this altogether unhealthy interpretation of life the Preacher raises objection, and points out, that the real nerve of our happiness in life must be sought in what is common, in the ordinary, in things of everyday recurrence, in home-life, and that it is against the ordinance of God, and misappreciation of His love in everyday life when the bread-crumbs of domesticity vex us.
And therefore he says:
“Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which God has given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity; for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
And to this all who understand aright the tie of nature and grace still respond, with an whole-hearted Amen.
EVERY other view of life is cruel, and offensively puts the appointment of God’s Providence to shame.
For is it not fact, which suffers no denial, that millions and again millions of men and women have nothing else than this ordinary life, whose whole life consists of these very ordinary relationships and very ordinary occupations, and never come to anything extraordinary, yea, even cannot think of it.
And if now, truly, this ordinary, quiet, domestic, everyday life were so poor, so barren, so unrefreshing for our heart, and so empty of life’s happiness, where then is the Providence of your God, by which just this, and no other, lot for ninety hundreds of His human children has been appointed and determined?
And when, by your abuse of this ordinary and quiet and very everyday life, you spoil the taste to enjoy it with others, are you then not cruel, offensively cruel, since you are utterly incapable of giving to these millions and millions another, an higher happiness in its place?
And when the Preacher tries to instill again a mind and a taste for this quiet and commonplace and domestic happiness, do you not recognize in him the Preacher of the Word of his God, who endeavors to disclose to you, what happiness of life God included in this ordinary existence?
“GODLINESS with satisfaction is great gain,” wrote the apostle to Timothy (I, 6, 6, Dutch version).
Notice carefully the word “satisfaction.” Even as the Dutch word for “taking satisfaction in a thing,” it has the meaning in it of the word: enough. Not only in our language, but also in the original language of Holy Scripture.
He who has “enough,” is satisfied, and tastes “pleasure.”
And godliness brings you this “satisfaction,” because it makes you believe, that God appointed you your lot in life, that your environment is of His making, that the work in which you engage, is the calling given you of Him, and thus that in this your existence, because God has so apportioned it unto you, there must be enough to satisfy your heart, provided you but know how to get it out of it.
He who always looks for something else than he has, wants another house than the one in which he lives, another environment than that wherein God has placed him, another garment than what he wears, another calling than that wherein he works, is conscious at last of a dislike in his heart against that house, that garment, that calling, that environment. He becomes peevish and irritable with respect to it. He is unable to appreciate all this, and utterly incapable of getting the relative good out of it. He draws poison from it, and cannot gather honey out of it, because he sees nothing but thistles round about him, and nowhere flowers.
But he who faces all this differently, thinks and knows: This is the life I have to live. These are the persons from among whom I must form my circle. This is the house in which I must be happy. This is the work in which I must find pleasure… . So he looks away from other and greater things, fixes his look upon what he has, and gradually comes to discover how great a treasure, and ever increasing a wealth there hides in that ordinary life, which God included in it but which he failed to observe.
WE, Christians of the Netherlands, understand this, because to us above all it was given to bring this costly gift of the quiet common home-life to a rarely high development.
In the height of our spiritual life, our Christian people did not lend themselves to foreign or uncommon matters, but applied themselves to develop as richly as possible the home-life, the common calling, the everyday labor, the altogether ordinary life-circles, to cultivate taste and mind for it, and to abound in praise and thanksgiving for the uncommon treasure of both material and spiritual happiness, which is found in just ordinary human life.
Even foreigners have admired the life of our fathers, poets have celebrated it in song, and artists have lauded it in our national character, that Calvinism gave rise to that glorious, and to this day world-renowned school of painters, who most always brought upon canvas the ordinary life, and as by magic made its expressive of rich satisfaction and inward delight.
And that in connection with this the Preacher every time puts eating and drinking in the foreground, is no fault, but must be so.
For “eating and drinking” is the family meal, and that family meal, especially at midday, is in sooth the crown of domestic life. Then all come together. Together they enjoy each other’s company. They are conscious of their oneness as a family. Together they enjoy the fruit of their common labor. Together they praise and give thanks, together they pray and supplicate. And strengthened by this delight shared in common, each returns to the rich task of the common life.
AND does this search after “satisfaction” in everyday life work injury to the growth of spiritual life?
Forsooth, when this inward “satisfaction” was the hall-mark of our national character, spiritual life among us was strongest.
This very sobriety of everyday life fosters piety and honor, and holds the young man in bit and bridle.
It distracts less, and encourages the soul to turn in more upon itself. By less diversion outside it creates time and cultivates taste for sound literature. It spreads a sheen of satisfaction over every member of the family. And in this quiet atmosphere provides what is required for a life of prayer.
We do not even admit, that that over-stimulated spiritual sense, which always seeks spiritual extras, and pursues piety outside, and enjoys nothing spiritually, except something special attends it, is of a higher cast.
On the contrary, this spirit of detachment is less pious. Spiritually it leads to over-stimulation, and renders the ordinary means, ordained of God for our edification, insufficient.
Spiritually too one then becomes nauseous of common bread, and always asks for what a proverb calls “crusty pastries.”
Healthy at heart is only such a life, in which the ordinary is enough for us, and thereby all of life is made to be one rich satisfaction.
Then there is happiness and thanks well up in the heart. Then the usual mood of the heart is that of glorifying God. Then there is courage of life and strength of life to bear the cross, which each day lays upon us.
Then there come days indeed, that we go from home to the country or sea-side.
But always such, that, when presently we come back, we feel, we realize again, that being on the wing was good for a few weeks, but that our real life, and therewith our real happiness in life is hid of God in just our ordinary home.
If only in the home we might but learn to find it.