Laughing Your Way to Heaven
A blurb in USA Today reports that children laugh
an average of 400 times a day while adults laugh 15 times a day. If anything,
that latter number seems high to me. I know a few folks who apparently haven’t
laughed since the Truman administration. But then again life is hard and no one
gets a free ride and perhaps some people think that laughter is a sign that you
don’t take life seriously enough.
So I ask myself, Why do children laugh so much?
I think it’s because no one has told them not to. They laugh because they
haven’t yet learned to doubt everything they hear and see. The world still
amazes them. Watch a child long enough and you’ll see him giggle over a ladybug
and clap his hands with glee when the cat nuzzles up against him. Somewhere I
read that angels fly because they take themselves lightly and God seriously.
Our problem is nearly the exact opposite. We take ourselves so seriously (I
wonder who the next president will be?) that we don’t have time to laugh at
anything. Laughter is for kids. Right, and the other part of the statement is
true, too. We get so wrapped up in our own affairs that we forget that God is
God and we’re not. Children have no problem taking God seriously, which is why
Jesus said you need the faith of a child to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Do you think we will laugh in heaven? Yes, of
course we will.
I should also mention that laughter is good for
the body as well as the soul. Dr. Lee Berk of the Loma Linda School of Medicine
says that laughter plays a role in promoting good health. Laughter helps
produce NK cells, which fight infections, including pneumonia and bronchitis.
Laughter also suppresses the release of cortisol, a hormone that weakens the
immune system. Laughter raises the body’s pain threshold and acts as a muscle
relaxer. It also increases circulatory capacity and strengthens organs, helping
the body to become more resistant to infection while boosting energy levels.
The article had a headline that said, “If you
want to live longer, die laughing.” That’s nice, but Solomon said it better
in Proverbs
17:22, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries
up the bones.”
Underneath all this is a huge theological truth
that we keep bumping up against. As long as we believe that everything depends
on us, we don’t have time to relax, much less to laugh. But if we believe in
the prevenient grace of God, we can take time to chuckle because we know that
the future rests in his good hands. Once again the Bible is proved true. A
merry heart doeth good like medicine, a little child shall lead them, and
having been saved by grace, we will enter heaven laughing with eternal joy
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she
was sixty. She’s ninety seven today, and we don’t know where the hell she is.
Yo’ momma is so old, she was a waitress at the Last
Supper.
Yo momma is so ugly there are going to move Halloween to
her birthday.
Yo’momma is so old she sat behind Jesus in the third
grade.
Yo’ momma is so poor she waves around a popsicle and
calls it air conditioning.
Yo momma is so fat her belly button doesn’t have lint, it
has sweaters
Yo momma is so skinny her pajamas only have one stripe
Yo momma is so dumb, she got fired from the M & M
factory for throwing out the “W”’s
Yo momma is so fat she had to go to Sea World to get
baptized.
Yo momma is so nasty she joined the Four Horsemen of the
Apocolypse: war, pestilence, death, famine, and Yo’ momma
Yo momma is so old, when she was born the Dead Sea was
just getting sick.
