365 Days of the Great Names of God, Day 111: God of Laughter

God of Laughter

"He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy." (Job 8:21 NIV)

At the end of her eighth-grade year, my younger daughter looked as though she'd lost her best friend. 

And in a way, she had. Actually, she'd lost her two best friends. 

Both girls were, thank goodness, still very much alive, and both still, thank goodness, wanted to be my daughter's friend. But her best school friend was changing schools, and her best church friend was changing churches. Both of these losses came at the same time, and I'll never forget the look of grief on my daughter's face the day she got confirmation that her school friend would no longer be part of her daily life. 

I couldn't tell her everything would be okay, because I wasn't sure it would be, and I didn't want to disrespect my daughter's feelings for her friends. I knew I needed to let her have her time of weeping. But when we got home from school that day, my older daughter called her sister to come into our living room. She went slowly, weighed down by sorrow, but a few minutes later, from an adjoining room where I was working, I heard howls of laughter from both my girls. The laughing continued rather raucously for several minutes. 

My older daughter, anticipating what her sister needed, had dug up an old camera, and the two of them were looking at pictures and videos from their younger years, making fun of themselves and each other and their outfits and their hair. I listened to their laughter and thought to myself that I was hearing the truth of Proverbs 17:22 in action: "a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength."

Later, I thanked my older daughter, and she said, "I knew that would make her laugh." Her sister's sadness was not over, of course, but in the intermingled seasons of our lives, weeping and laughing often pile on top of each other. Sometimes, if we wait to laugh until there is nothing to cry about, we never do laugh at all.

In case you need a little laughter therapy yourself, I thought I'd leave you today with a few prescriptions for it. And if you don't feel much like laughing at the moment, that's okay, too: just note that small third word in today's key verse. Hold on for the "yet," and wait for the laughter that will be yours when you get there.

*Christian comedian Tim Hawkins: https://m.youtube.com/user/timhawkinscomedy

*Christian comedian Anita Renfroe "William Tell Momisms" song:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YYukEAmoMCQ

*John McPherson comics: https://www.gocomics.com/closetohome/

*Family-friendly comedy movies:
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/lists/best-family-movie-laughs