Happy Places

Ephesians chapter 5 gives us some checkpoints as we seek to walk in a manner pleasing to God:
1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. 3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

My goodness!  We are actually called to be "imitators of God" - and, I have to admit that I fall short in what I do and what I say - our words actually become windows into our souls - that's essentially what Jesus said as He taught about the relationship between our mouths and our hearts.  

So, we have to allow the Holy Spirit to search us internally, so that thoughts and attitudes that are not pleasing to Him are removed.   If we are submissive and really, really want to walk like Jesus, even though we may miss it frequently, God will continue to do His work in our hearts and make us more like Him.

Some challenging words from Colossians chapter 3 can assist us in a "heart check":
5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him...

Well, here's something from the "people who have too much time on their hands" department - a survey that measured cities and states in terms of their happiness, or sadness.   Researchers analyzed some 10 million geotagged tweets from 373 urban areas across America.   To find these purported emotional extremities of the US, the researchers analyzed each tweet for its happiness content based on the positive words, such as beauty and love, and negative words, such as boo and lied, that were used.  In addition to whether or not a tweet contained "happy" or "sad" words, the extent to which a city used certain words more or less than the national average also played a role in its rating.   And, of course, some of these words considered were what you could consider "coarse" or "cuss" words.

And, while you might want to dismiss this as a really fun survey with a small scientific component, well, there's a 19-page pdf file that gives some pretty specific analysis, including over 400 demographic factors that are correlated with the results.  Whew!

The results might surprise you:  the top 5 happiest states in this survey are:  5) Vermont, 4) Utah, 3) Nevada, 2) Maine, and #1 - Hawaii!    The saddest states are: 46) Alabama 47) Georgia 48) Delaware 49) Maryland 50) Mississippi 51) Louisiana.  (We have 51 because of the inclusion of the District of Columbia).

Now, let's get specific with cities:  the happiest city in America:  Napa, California!   The saddest: Beaumont, Texas.    In the top 10 of happy places, you find Santa Cruz, CA, Santa Fe, NM, and San Clemente, CA at 5,4, and 3, respectively.   Asheville, NC comes in at #10.

On the sad side, looking into the bottom 15 - there's Dothan and Montgomery at #15 and 14.   3 cities in Louisiana penetrate the bottom 10, including Monroe at 5 and Shreveport at 4.  At #3, it's Texas City, TX, #2, Albany, GA and #1, Beaumont.

Looks like the language being used by some of our fellow citizens is contributing to a less-than-stellar showing in this one survey.   And, it can challenge us in several ways:

Jesus said that out of the abundance of our hearts our mouths speak.   So, if we find ourselves using negative or discouraging words, we need to check our hearts and see if there needs to be a spiritually-motivated attitude adjustment.  So we can ask ourselves:  Do our words short circuit our witness?   If we have acquired a reputation for complaining, gossiping, and slander, then does that draw people to Christ or does it repel people?   Do people want to be like us if we skew toward the negative?    We have to be so careful that we reflect the character of Christ, with an attitude of humility toward God and compassion toward others.