I think my church would be bigger if I looked like this

Somehow this guy seems like he would be a good pastor!!! I think a few would come just because of “the look.” I think it looks like kind of spiritual. By the way, what does spirtual look like anyway?

Who Knew?

Despite its 216-minute running time, Lawrence of Arabia has no women in speaking roles.

Christians laugh!

      Christians laugh!!  You don’t think so?  Look again at your Bible.  The name of the child born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, the child who was promised to them by God, was “he laughs.”  That’s the meaning of the name, Isaac.  It was the laugh of surprise, the laugh of joy, the laugh of defiance.  God laughs, too.  See Isaiah 59:8.  In Jesus’ very first sermon He promised us that we would laugh.  “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.”(Lk 6:21)  As St. Teresa of Avila put it, “Mirth is from God, and dullness is from the devil.”
          I can’t find the chapter and verse but it seems wholly in keeping with the Bible that laughter is a sign of God’s presence.  For we are children again and believe that we are in the Father’s care and live in the Father’s world.  The weight of sin has been lifted, heaven is our home, and all the way to heaven is heaven.  We skip, we dance, and we look for new songs to sing. 
          Maybe it’s my temperament, but when I am at my best with God, I laugh.  I am a bit suspicious of those who don’t and quite sure they won’t understand why I do.  Perhaps they will think I am a jokester who never quite grew up.  Maybe they will think I am flippant and not wholly aware of other people’s pain.  Or it could be that I need to be more professional., like I was once told by one church leader who felt I told too many jokes when I baptized people and should baptize people without making such a splash of water.  Of course, I immediately thought of a joke about putting Downey in the baptistry so we could soften people’s splash down.  (No, I didn’t say it! I should have though!!!)  But my guess is that if they knew how much laughter I hold back, they might be more generous in their criticism.

         Here is how CK Chesterton put it: 

“The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels…never concealed His tears.  He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city.  Yet He concealed something…He never restrained His anger.  He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell.  Yet He restrained something.  I say it with reverence: there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.  There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray…There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

         Who could have ever understood a God of mirth doing the serious business of redemption? We require God to cry. He condescends to us, and so I imagine He must in some measure conceal His joy. But I think as you move closer to Him that is what you see.

          So if you hear me laughing a bit too much, cut me some slack.  Sometimes it’s the most spiritual thing I do.