America’s Unhappiest Cities

Four days ago, the Lord honored me with an opportunity to make a presentation on the Pentecostal religion as part of the training of a small group of Psychiatry Residents from the Harvard Medical School. While preparing for my presentation, I came across an article on Businessweek.com** that listed the most-unhappy cities in America. The data used to rank each city was based on the following six factors: depression, suicide, crime, divorce, unemployment, and believe it or not, cloudy days.

For example, this article listed the City of Atlanta as the 10th most-unhappy city in the United States. Out of the 50 cities studied, Atlanta ranked 29th in depression, 18th in suicide, 2nd in crime, 28th in divorce, its unemployment rate was 7.7% as of December 2008, and it had experienced 149 cloudy days in 2008. The other cities listed were quite surprising to me as well, in that I always thought of some of them as bastions of fun. For example, the city of Las Vegas was listed at number seven. Regardless of whether or not I agree with this article or how the data was used, it did cause me to think about the following Scripture: Going down to a Samaritan city, Philip proclaimed the Message of the Messiah. When the people heard what he had to say and saw the miracles, the clear signs of God’s action, they hung on his every word. Many who could neither stand nor walk were healed that day. The evil spirits protested loudly as they were sent on their way. And what joy in the city! (Acts 8:5-8; Message Bible)

It was verse 8 that struck me. Whereas this article listed six categories to rank a city’s unhappiness quotient, this Scripture uses six words to describe what God can do for a city if His people would only let God use them for His purposes. Then came the question I was forced to ask myself: Does Pentecostal Tabernacle bring joy to Cambridge? And not just any type of joy, but a joy that comes from our Lord (Nehemiah 8:10; Romans 14:17; Galatians 5:22).

My prayer is that no matter what the season is—winter, spring, summer, or autumn—we as individuals and as a congregation would be a God-given transformative influence of joy to our communities and to our city. I invite your thoughts.

**Note: Read the rest of the Businessweek.com article here. For further reading, click here