A Laugh is a Smile that Bursts

"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones." Proverbs 17:22


Ever laugh so much your ribs hurt? I have and is it ever a blessed hurt. I love to laugh and to be around others who do. I like to feel the edges of my mouth widen, my eyes crinkle up, and my shoulders shake with mirth. It delights me to look across the room and see my friends bent double with laughter, or to hear their hoots of joy. New born babies peer into the faces of others, and within a few weeks, a smile slides over that little face, and it is marked down in a book, and the family rejoices. A six-month old in a fit of laughter can stop traffic in a mall; a gaggle of giggling girls may take over a neighborhood; the yelps of laughter from a boys clubhouse stamps as perfect a Summer afternoon.

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God -Karl Barth


There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voices of children, the expression of a laughter-loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it... Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man, without egotism and full of feeling…laughter is the music of life.


A laugh is a smile that bursts. ~Mary H. Waldrip

There is within us a natural tendency to laugh. When we let it, laughter will bubble spontaneously from within us, the music of life. Since we are created in the image of God, where else might that have come from except from the laughter bubbling spontaneously from the heart of God?


I am serious, so I laught a lot. You need to laugh. You don't laugh enough. I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. ~ Maya Angelou


Haven't you always really suspected that God had a tremendous sense of humor? Have you ever watched an ostrich running? Have you ever taken a good look at a duck-billed platypus? It looks like God was creating the world and had a few extra parts left over and said, "Hey! Let's just take this duck's bill and stick it on a beaver and see what happens! It'll be fun!"

Take a look at some of the stories in the Bible. When we look at some of the stories in the Bible in the right way, they could only have happened because of God's sense of humor. For instance, God made a covenant with Abraham. God said to Abraham, "If you keep my covenant I will bless you and your descendants will be more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars of the heaven." That's an incredible, wonderful promise. The only problem is, God made that covenant with someone who was childless -- at age one hundred. And his wife Sarah is ninety. Certainly that's a joke of some kind. God couldn't have made a covenant with someone, say, nineteen? Or did God plan to make a covenant with Abraham all along and just procrastinated for a century? Whatever, when God sent special messengers to Abraham's tent to say, "Yup. That's right. Sarah's gonna get pregnant. Gonna have a baby," Sarah was the only one who got the joke. She heard what they said and she laughed and laughed. There she was ninety years old, standing outside the tent laughing so hard her sides were cramping up. And guess what. Sarah got pregnant. And had a baby. And they named him Isaac. Isaac means "laughter."


Funny enough, my baby boy is named OWEN ISAAC...coincidence? I think not. :)

(excerpts above taken from online article: Hey! Science Agrees with the Bible: Laughter is the Best Medicine & a SERMON from Oct 6, 2002
entitled, "The Laughter of God:" Psalm 126)



The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. ~ e.e. cummings