laughing it up...

I like to laugh. It doesn’t matter if it’s laughter from a good joke, a well-timed pun, a dead-on impersonation, a sarcastic comment or even a clever practical joke. God has made me a laugher.

“If you ask me, I think it is often just as sacred to laugh as it is to pray . . . or preach . . . or witness. But then – laughter is a witness in many ways,” writes Chuck Swindoll in The Winsome Witness.

I wonder if that’s because people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. When writing, I get a much more positive response when I poke fun at myself or my life. Whenever I’m planning something, I like to put it together with a few laughs thrown in. I love to see the smiles and hear the laughter that can come from close fellowship.

God is a god of laughter. There are so many scriptural examples of humor (Abraham & Sarah’s late-in-life son, a talking donkey, a king eating grass, the exaggeration of nagging women, fools and lazy men in Proverbs, the satire and sarcasm in the book of Job and Jesus’ comments about gnats vs. camels and polishing the outside of a cup but not cleaning the inside) that I can’t believe God doesn’t have a sense of humor. In my own life alone, I know God is chuckling about giving me four boys to raise. He has perfectly good reasons for doing that, but I also believe he thinks it’s funny. So do I. (Well, maybe not so much when they decide to mud wrestle or eat raw crab apples.)

I can’t imagine going through life and not seeing the inevitable humor. I often find those little upsets easier to handle when I look at them through the laughter lenses. I’m not sure if that’s what Paul meant when he wrote, “Consider it all joy...” but I’ve tried to take that to heart. There is no reason we can’t be happy, smiling Christians.

Let’s face it - much of life is funny. It’s funny when my baby laughs at his burps or when he thinks he’s sneaky stealing a roll off the table. It’s funny when you realize someone else’s kids can be monsters just like yours. It’s funny when someone can tell a clever joke. It’s funny when you set every clock and timer in someone’s house to go off at 2 a.m. (That wasn’t me, by the way.) And it’s even funny when kids ask, “Why is your belly so wrinkly, Mom?”

It wouldn’t hurt any of us to smile or laugh a bit more.

We don’t have to always look for the negative in things or search for ways to cause problems just because we don’t agree with others. Why is it so hard to build each other up, even when the Bible tells us so? We can’t box people in any more than we can box God in by saying He can only work in certain ways, through certain circumstances or through certain people. The Old Testament clearly shows us that He can even work through a donkey (an intelligent, articulate one at that).

God can work through people, through pain, through circumstances and even through laughter. I think Solomon tried to tell us that when he wrote “A cheerful heart is good medicine.”

And indeed it is. Now, it’s up to me to spread the joy..