How Many Time A Day Do You Laugh?
I'm enjoying Richard Swenson's book, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. Though the wealth of wisdom in this book could be better grounded in the gospel, I highly recommended this book to any of you busy people who are in need of some biblical and common sense wisdom on how to rest and restore some margin to your life.One section of this book that I particularly enjoyed was a brief series of paragraphs devoted to laughter. I think there are some connections to be made between laughter, the gospel, and evangelism. Consider Swenson's statistics on laughter:
"By the time babies are four months old, they already are laughing once every hour. And by the age of four years, these clowns laugh on average once every four minutes--or four hundred times a day. By the time we reach adulthood, however, we manage only fifteen laughs a day."
Wouldn't it be great if one of the ways you witnessed to your busy, overloaded neighbors was through your laughter? I believe the gospel has something to say about laughter. I believe the gospel gives saved sinners great grounds for laughter. The gospel teaches us that our greatest problem has been solved: we've been saved from God's wrath, from our sins, from death, and from hell. We've been freely given a relationship with the living God. This God is in control of our lives. He knows our needs, he hears our prayers, and he's promised to take care of us.If Swenson's point is true, that laughter is absent from our lives because of worry, stress, and the idols of control and greed, then we Christians ought to be the most laughter-filled people around. Once it sinks in that Jesus Christ has given us a Father, given us a relationship with the good, sovereign, kind, promise-keeping, Heavenly Father, it ought to increase our laughter. We ought to me moving from "fifteen laughs a day" closer to the "four hundred times a day" evidenced by four year olds.Perhaps our laughter can serve as one way of measuring how in tune we are with just how good the good news is. How's your laughter? This is a question I'm going to stick with for a while.