Read a very compelling book sitting in the swing today, The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku. The book was published when he was 100 years old. As a teenager in Leipzig, Germany, Eddie was beaten by the Nazi SS, arrested and sent to a concentration camp with thousand of other Jews. For the next seven years he was tortured and abused in four prison camps including Buchenwald and Auschwitz. He was beaten and shot and whipped and starved. On a forced death march during the last days of the Third Reich, he escaped and was eventually rescued by American troops.

He lost his mother and father and his country and yet, against unbelievable odds, he never lost hope or his will to live. His words at the end of his story are simple but powerful— “I promised when I came out on the dark side of my life, that I would be happy for the rest of my life and smile because if you smile, the world smiles with you. Life is not always happiness. Sometimes there are many hard days. But you must remember that you’re lucky to be alive – we are all lucky in this way. Every breath is a gift. Life is beautiful if you let it be. Happiness is in your hands.”

“Every breath is a gift. Life is beautiful if you let it be. Happiness is in your hands.”

Happiness is a choice and we should be ashamed of the minor interferences in our days that we let shape our happiness. Most of us have never been really hungry or left outside without shelter from the cold. We lack gratitude for life’s everyday blessings. We lack tolerance and kindness in this world that spins too fast. His simple words we should all take to heart, “life is beautiful if you let it be.”

He talks of life as an open barren field. But if we plant something there in that barren field, we have a garden. Our garden is our life. Jaku writes, “Give something, something will come back. Give nothing, nothing will come back. To grow a flower is a miracle: it means you can grow more. Remember that a flower is not just a flower it’s a start of a whole garden.”

“I wish to them from my heart, may they have lots to share, lots of good health to spare, and wonderful friends that care.”

We should all take a moment in prayer for those in need of kindness and compassion. We should plant the seeds of God’s love and grace and nurture them to share with others, bringing them into the kingdom of God. Scripture in Galatians reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” We should all try to live by the fruit of the Spirit.

Jaku died in 2021 at the age of 101. He had a beautiful sweet smile. The last page of his book reads, “I want the world to be a better place and hope humanity might be restored a little by reading this book. I also want to say to you to never give up hope. It is never too late to be kind, polite, and a loving human being. I wish everybody best of luck. Your friend, Eddie.”

“To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — that is to have succeeded.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson