Want to Laugh? Why Not Find Your Peace First?

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.” -  Charles Dickens

 

Wisdom Nugget: "Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter ends, the grief remains"

Before I get very deep on The Gift of Laughter, let me register an observation. I have seen mad people laugh, drunkards laugh and even wicked people laugh. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between real laughter and the superficial, cosmetic kind.

 

Many people are seeking laughter in their heart when they really need peace. Laughter is to a wounded heart what morphine is to terminal cancer. Max Lucado, in "No Wonder They Call Him the Savior", tells the story of Maria and her daughter Christina.

Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent living at home having only a pallet on the floor, a wash basin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she ran away, breaking her mother's heart. Her mother knew what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, so Maria quickly packed to go find her daughter. On her way to the bus stop, she went to a drugstore to get one last thing - pictures.

She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all the money she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she got on the next bus to Rio de Janeiro. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. At each place she left her picture--taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, or fastened to a corner phone booth. On the back of each photo she wrote a note. It wasn't too long before Maria's money and pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home.

The tired mother cried as the bus began its long journey back to her small village. A few weeks later, Christina was coming down the stairs in a seedy hotel. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times she had longed to trade all those countless beds for her secure pallet. And yet the little village seemed too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina's eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back Maria had written this: "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn't matter. Please come home." And Christina went home. 

God is the same way. He wants us to come home. It doesn't matter what we've done. It doesn't matter what we've become. We can always come home to Him. It is like Maria, reaching out for her daughter even when her daughter didn't realize it. It is like God reaching out to us while we are living a life of sin and we are lost and yet, Christ is there...reaching...longing...desiring to bring us home. It is prevenient grace - it has kept us, as Newton writes, "safe thus far."

May I suggest that before you laugh, first find your peace in Christ.