No need to clap your hands....

I came across this quote the other day and instantly fell in love with it. "If you're happy and you know it, you don't need to clap your hands".

It is of course a twist on what used to be a great Sunday School song.... "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands", and if my memory serves me correct, I can remember singing this song as a child and readily clapping my hands along with all the other children in my Sunday School class just as instructed, even though the happiness that I was supposed to be expressing was perhaps not of the most authentic kind due to my preference to being off somewhere else, perhaps with my mates playing in the park rather than having to attend Sunday School.
Years later when I became a Sunday School teacher myself, and then a so called leader in the "childrens church" movement, I can recall having to lead children in the singing of this song, and knowing some of the situations these children were facing in their lives at home and at school, I sometimes wondered just how authentic their own happiness really was as they too clapped their hands to this song.

Many years on, I have of course come to realise that happiness is by and large a rather fleeting kind of thing at the best, and is a poor substitute for an inner confidence and contentment regardless of whether one is facing good times or bad. The act of "clapping ones hands", or deliberately exhibiting any form of outward behaviour in order to demonstrate or convince others that you are in fact happy is in most cases going to be the undeniable proof that you are not.
If I am truly secure in who I am, safe in the realisation that I am loved, content in the understanding that God holds my life in His hands, then it is far more likely that there is no need, no requirement and no hunger to have to demonstrate to anyone else that I am in this particular state. I simply rest in it and if it shows, it shows, but there exists no pressure from within to have to prove that I am in fact "happy".
This concept seems to have evaded many “leaders” that I have encountered in church life over the years. I can recall far too many who were always prodding and pressing for people to be participants in their own particular brand of “hand clapping”.
It’s as if they had convinced themselves that if you will just “clap” when instructed, if you will just “repeat after me” or respond to what I am saying by shouting, standing, sitting, raising your hands or waving a flag, then I can assume that you must strongly agree with me and I must therefore be saying something important and this reassures me that I have value as a person.
The prophet Isaiah said... "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength"
Now, I am not suggesting that there is never a time to clap or express some form of joy or happiness, quite the opposite. I believe that if a person is truly content and at peace in themselves, there is bound to be many outward expressions of that joy that will be expressed from time to time. But I also believe that an authentic expression of joy or happiness cannot and should not be measured by ones willingness to “clap” their hands in response to anothers request to do so and neither will it ever be credible evidence that they are in fact happy.
If you’re happy and you know it, you don’t NEED to clap your hands.!!