When was the last time you had a good laugh? I’m talking a deep belly laugh that is distracting and hard to muffle. The kind of laugh when your partner looks over at you and wonders if you are okay or has to pause the TV because you are giggling so loudly.
Over the last few weeks, I have laughed more. I just needed to. It began when our kids started watching AFV, America’s Funniest Videos together in the evening. Usually after dinner and bath there is this lull time that could really go either way. Either the kids could play and get all wound up again, or they could slow down, sit down and then comes those magic words that every parent loves to see…settle down. Our kids started watching a few of these episodes with my parents when Ryan and I were away in England and it has continued since we got back.
What I like most about it, is that for these 15 to 20 minutes, all five of us can sit together and laugh. Our kids are now old enough to comprehend, if only a little bit, what is happening on screen. Sure, there are dishes to clean and laundry to fold, but laughter and connection are happening instead and I am the first to tell you that I have to remind myself that this is good. You see, I often move toward the task, the list, the job and save the “fun” for after but lately, I have tried to change my thinking and begin to see the laughter as part of the work.
I don’t have to tell you that we are living in difficult times as we look at a nation divided in the final months of election season, a culture that has moved away from seeking out faith traditions and the busyness of all of our lives that cuts at the core of our family and relationships. And while all of that is true and I am sure you feel it too, we often can’t control what is happening around us, but we can control how we respond. And I encourage you to do two things:
- Laugh
- And Laugh in Community
I don’t know if Jesus laughed a lot, I picture that he did, however we don’t have a lot of Scriptural proof of that. But if the phrase “Do not fear!” is the command mentioned more than any other phrase in the Bible, I imagine that instead of fear there was laughter. Because following Jesus and being on this adventure with God is a joy, unexpected and challenging yes, but full of abundant joy. God often reminds me to take God seriously and take myself less seriously and when I do that, I laugh more. I look at life as a gift, not a do to list or a burden.
I want to leave you with a short paragraph from 1 Peter, a letter that I admit I haven’t spent much time studying. But I hope as you read it you can see how it says all that I have been feeling lately about letting Jesus bring you joy and laughing more because we are free to not take life so seriously. I hope it speaks a word to you this morning too that encourages you for the week ahead. And if I can encourage anything in your family, in your work, in your relationships…is to laugh more.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-9
AMEN