A wise man once said, "Success is not the way to happiness; happiness is the way to success."

Or something similar -- point well taken: If we like what we're doing, enjoy it as much as we can enjoy labor, if we follow our hearts and instincts, with the Spirit, and a smile, we'll succeed with all work set before us by God.

Happiness comes from joy and true joy comes only from the Lord, meaning that we're in tune with Him (and His plan for our lives) when we are happy doing what He planned for us.

We plant and water, but it's God Who grows. Things fall into place when left in His Hands. As a recent note in the mailbag, from a fellow who identified himself as "Bill W" testified: "I have been praying in a Chapel of Perpetual Adoration for years and a petition I have been making for the last year or so with no results. On my way to work a car in front of me had a sticker that read 'I know Bill W' and under the sticker was a large decal in bright yellow letters that read, 'Let God and let Go.' I was dumbfounded and thanked God. Waiting now with trust and confidence!"

When we're sour, expecting the worst -- or less-than-the-best, straying from faith, wearing that upside-down smile called a frown -- the world reflects precisely that glumness back at us.

It's not to mean we should be self-seeking nor Pollyanna. Happiness is not an end unto itself. God is the goal. Gladness comes with Him. Nor is it to say that suffering won't arrive. Jesus did not smile and joke on the Cross. It's hard down here! Some jobs are "down and dirty." There is the suffering of tedium. Life is a test and designed that way.

But when "bad" things come, don't be discouraged. There is a reason. Life is suffering and once we accept that (said another wise man), we transcend it.

An attitude of happiness even in suffering transcends time with a permanent imprint on the soul. Call it the grace of longsuffering.

And happiness attracts happy circumstances. It is a light. It is His Light. When we are truly in touch with the Lord, we rise above earthly predicaments -- suffering, perhaps, but in a way that brings development.

Always: there is His Light if we look toward the end of the tunnel, instead of its dark sides, or what is behind us. Everyone goes through sadness. Mourns. Everyone has a "dark night of the soul."

But when we adopt darkness as the way we approach life, it is darkness that we always find; God is not in the sunset so much as He is in the sunrise.