”Jesus Christ refused the crown that Satan offered Him in the wilderness, Buttrick said, but He is king nonetheless because again and again, he is crowned in the heart of the people who believe in Him. And that inward coronation takes place, Buttrick said, ‘among confession, and tears, and great laughter.’
It was the phrase ‘great laughter’ that did it, did whatever it was I believe must have hiddenly in the doing all the years of my journey up till then. It was not so much that a door opened as that I suddenly found that a door had been open all along which I had only just then stumble upon…I had found whatever it was that I had found. Le bon Dieu.”
It was the phrase ‘great laughter’ that did it, did whatever it was I believe must have hiddenly in the doing all the years of my journey up till then. It was not so much that a door opened as that I suddenly found that a door had been open all along which I had only just then stumble upon…I had found whatever it was that I had found. Le bon Dieu.”
Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey
In the midst of abundance, at the vortex of giddy happiness, in the gut of a belly laugh, we sense a Being whose mirth is the source of all that is good, and beautiful, and humorous. This is His gift to us – the gift of laughter. Laughter enables us to be glad about His goodness- that there is much to celebrate, to feel good about this world, His creation, no matter how bleak, how gloomy it can be, it still is a place worth enjoying.
In a sense of merriment, all that is good and refreshing spills out in pure and sweet notes of hilarity – a love song of sort, offered up to Him who allows us to have this sense of wonder and delight. To laugh is to appreciate His ways – it is to celebrate His abundance.
Laughter allows us to see the ridiculous in us, the absurd, the foolish – and with laughter, we sense that there is nothing wrong with being ridiculous, to be comical at times. We are not too twisted, too cynical so that we are unable to acknowledge life’s little jokes.
Laughter harks back to times when we were more innocent, unblemished –holy. Laughter is holy. An absurd notion, but when you consider it, it is in laughter that we sense purity, and a sense of separateness from a world that has become too dour, too serious. Perhaps, one of the marks of holiness is to be able to appreciate, and indeed offer peals of laughter to Him who created everything, and created everything good.
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