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Thank you so much for the beautiful essay-post and testimony!

Deep and lasting happiness is not self-centered, it is God-centered. It blossoms rather than appearing as a trophy standing on some distant finish line, waiting to be 'pursued' ... waiting to be 'earned'. Deep and lasting happiness blesses our lives when we entrust our lives to Him, and daily strive to be the people He would have us be -- not when we focus our lives on our notions of personal physical or emotional needs or desires.

So very true. The word "joy" applies. It is the second fruit of the indwelling Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance - Gal 5:22-23)

As a Christian walks with the Lord and learns to trust Him, he is able to "count it all joy" no matter what the "it" is (James 1:2).

Here is a case-in-point from 1999 when Larry Ashbrook walked in on a youth service in a local Baptist church and slaughtered seven and wounded seven:

NewsMax 9/21/99 Bill Murchison “….On the assumption that Satan, enlisting the help of Larry Gene Ashbrook, set out last week to intimidate Christians ... well, did this unholy pair pick the wrong church! Liberal Protestants of hazy theological outlook -- that might have been one thing. But Southern Baptists! No one in his right mind would put forward the Baptists as subject matter for spiritual intimidation. Confronted, menaced, jeopardized, Baptists reach for a familiar object -- the Holy Bible. They open it, they brandish it, they thrust it right in the Devil's face. Just how heart-warming it was to see them do so on a sun-splashed Sunday afternoon, in Texas Christian University's football stadium, I beg here and now to report. The Baptists, to every appearance, have it right: Spiritual warfare rages in our midst.

“….The Baptists know all this [secularism] Their most engaging trait is that they don't care. They set forth the Truth as they have received it, that Jesus Christ died for your sins. Case in point: the Fort Worth commemoration. The occasion is ostensibly civic. The mayor is a speaker; Gov. George W. Bush and other office-holders have come as non-speakers just to reinforce the sense of public outrage and grief. A rabbi prays. I spot Moslems in the crowd. ….

Yet the occasion is saturated with Christian joy. There's an odd word -- "joy.'' What's joyous about the desecration of a house of worship and the slaughter of teenage worshippers and counselors? Nothing is "joyful'' about evil. Joy, as the Baptists of Fort Worth would make known, comes with God's response to evil. Does He leave it to fester? Hardly. He points to the victory already won, and in the end to be lastingly consummated, through His son's death and resurrection. It's right there in those Bibles waved under Satan's snoot. Nor does it stop even there, you dumb lunk with the pitchfork! Christians inside and outside the Southern Baptist Convention would affirm this reality….

“….Affirm? A mild word for what goes on at the stadium. What about the father of one of the victims, leading the audience/congregation in the singing of a song his murdered daughter had loved? What about the pastor of the desecrated church, the Rev. Al Meredith, whomping up a classic Baptist revival on the spot -- a call to fasting and repentance and prayer? "Raise your hand if you want the killing to stop -- if you want to see the spirit of the living God sweeping over our land like wildfire.'' Up in the air -- a forest of affirming arms, one of them attached to an Episcopalian journalist. Bad news for Satan. He's stirred up the Baptists -- folk who take him with the deep seriousness his malice deserves. The culture wars may have taken a decisive turn….”

Perhaps the Declaration of Independence was speaking to some secular concept of "happiness" - or perhaps it was speaking to property as in the Virginia Declaration of Rights - or perhaps both. But it surely was not speaking of Christian joy which requires only Him - and cannot be diminished at all by poverty, murder, persecutions, injustices, sickness or death.

The pursuit of happiness is an odd phrase in our contemporary culture. We link happiness with pleasure. Buying a new car makes us happy. Being in love fills us with happiness. We are happy when things are going well and sad when they are not.
Then there is the matter of joy, a spiritual experience having little or nothing to do with happiness. As Alamo-girl so succintly put it: "...Christian joy which requires only Him - and cannot be diminished at all by poverty, murder, persecutions, injustices, sickness or death."
There is, in truth, no pursuit of joy. It comes as a gift from God, as the dew in the morning and is available to us for as long as we choose to accept it.
Happiness of the sort guaranteed by our Constitution is a pursuit that can only occur when the citizenry is unfettered by opressive dictates of government.
Our current jargon might define the sort of happiness spoken of in our Constitution as self-fulfillment or self-actualization. The Constitution, after all, guarantees the freedom of individuals to pursue their lives (happiness) without undue government interference.
Once again, a piece of Constitutional wallpaper resounds with powerful intent. The pursuit of happiness limits the government from interference in the normal activities of the citizenry. The primacy of individual freedom is upheld by the happiness clause.
Government today has forsaken the Constitution's admonition that the citizenry be allowed to pursue happiness. Modern officialdom prefers that citizens pursue (legally enforcable versions of) the common good. The rights of the individual have been supplanted by the rights of society as defined by the government.
The government tells us to eat cake if we want to be happy. Just be sure to grant our overlords unlimited access to our labor, our property, our wealth and our sentiments.