Lord, I promise I will learn more perfectly from You the art of holy laughter. The laughter of men is based on the incongruous—the fat man unable to blow up a balloon or the thin man able to eat a ponderous meal. But Your laughter, Lord, deals with absurdities. C. H. Spurgeon laughed at the absurdity of a tiny mouse worrying lest Joseph’s granaries should run out of wheat. Sarah laughed at the absurdity of her conceiving and bearing a son in her old age (Genesis 18:12). So did Abraham (17:17).
Holy laughter is the result of a sharp, clear faith. And faith in the word of an all-powerful God makes human problems look absurd. Holy laughter is more than a sense of humor. It is a gift that results from spiritual sight. A sense of humor can be innate, worldly, and cruel. But the gift of holy laughter is the result of a sharpened spiritual vision, the ability to see the huge mountain range of God’s ability high above the plain of human frailty.
Holy laughter is also a correct view of ourselves. God’s commands to us are often so unusual they catch us—and others around us—by surprise. It is in the “surprise,” the difference between what we think God nicely ought to do and what He actually does, that holy laughter comes. For example, read the story of Rees Howells, founder and former director of the Bible College of Wales, and his giving up one meal a day, by God’s command. How could he possibly convince his mother that God asked him to reduce his meals to two a day as an act of obedience and discipleship? Her concept of God was a nice God who would never ask anyone to give up what was good for him!
Lord, I thank You for the times of holy laughter You have given me. May I never go without them, for when I do, my eye is too dim to see either You or myself with crystal clarity.
“Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them’” (Psalm 126:2).
Daily with the King 