There certainly is a lot of unhappiness in the world. Employees are unhappy. Students are unhappy. Marriages are unhappy. It’s so pervasive that there are unhappy corporations, unhappy families, unhappy teams and even unhappy churches! Whole towns are unhappy; sometimes whole states are unhappy. It all makes me unhappy. We live in a country with a Declaration of Independence that states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of HAPPINESS!” There it is. We have a right to be happy. From what I hear, this isn’t working out so well. Maybe there are too many people all trying to be happy at the same time at the expense of the people that are being made unhappy. One of the problems with the pursuit of happiness in the absence objective guidelines is that my happiness encroaches on your happiness if I am the definer of happiness. If the Creator endowed us with an inalienable right of happiness, maybe we should consider what the Creator told us is the means to that happiness. And, if there is an objective means and criteria for happiness, this might explain why there is so much unhappiness. A lot of Christmas cards are going to have the words, “Behold, I give you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.” I don’t think most people in this country are very happy with the pronouncement. If our happiness is not rooted in the “Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord,” our happiness is going to be short-lived, regardless of our rights. “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!”