Special Delivery
Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 9:48PM I love to laugh. And just as much as that, I love to make other people laugh.
I often feel, and maybe you do too, that if I don't laugh, I'll cry, or something worse. And the other night as I read through Reordered Love, Reordered Lives, I was very encouraged to find, early on, that David Naugle offers a response to our "ugly, depressing, 'gollumized' human predicament." (85) He says:
...we need to laugh at the jarring discrepancy between our exhausting efforts to discover the happy life and our abysmal failure to achieve it...Let us then trust God to do what we can't do for ourselves in the midst of our impossible circumstances, especially when it comes to learning the deep meaning of happiness. The laughter of faith [like Abraham and Sarah had] is at the center of the divine comedy, for there is salvation from sin and our brokenhearted loves and lives only in the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (85, 86)
There are many times when I sin, whether in word or deed, action or inaction, and I know it. I do the very thing that I wasn't supposed to do. Or I don't do the very thing that I knew I ought to have done. I expressed this with lament to Mike once years ago, and he looked at me with a smile and said,"Hmm, now where have I heard that before...?" It made me both laugh and feel somber at the same time. Paul details this very sentiment in his letter to the Romans, and he goes on to cry out,"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (vv. 24-25)
This wretchedness is familiar. And yet I, we! are called to move beyond that woe and despair to thanks, for there is a deliverer! Oh, for this I am so grateful!
And in light of this joyful good news, and in spite of the trouble that often finds us in this world, I think that it is all the more wonderful that along with the laughter of faith we are also blessed with the laughter of the just plain comical.
Naugle quotes Soren Kierkegaard. "'The comic is present in every stage of life..., because where there is life there is contradiction, and wherever there is contradiction, the comic is present.'" As a bonus alongside the comical contradictions in our lives that may fall more in the "jarring discrepancy" category are also the unexpected moments that illustrate a different kind of incongruity.
When unexpected things happen, it is funny. And being able to laugh at funny is such a blessing.
And you can be sure I laughed. I am still laughing. This was exactly what I needed at the time, and if I told you how I ended up being able to witness such a hilarious scene, it would (maybe) make it all the funnier and even special. A little joke, just for me. And for you too. I like to share the laughs.
Reader Comments (1)
Oh. My. Lanta! Stinkin hilarious. How ironic. Sweetman and I often realize afresh, after watching some comedy sketch or other, how philosophical comedy really is. You need to be able to discern the exact moment of contradiction and juxtapose that right up against the commonality of man's plight in life. (Clear as mud??) ;)