Dear Friends,
There is a lot of laughter around our church, especially among
leadership and particularly during our weekly staff meetings. Yesterday
was no exception. We call like to call it 'whimsy' and almost every meeting
commences with some form of it. In fact, I confess that sometimes whimsy takes
up as much of our time as it takes to complete our working agenda.
Laughter is always a critical component of our church agenda.
John Haltiwanger writes, “Laughter is one of life's greatest
gifts. It makes our complex and often confusing existence decidedly more
tolerable. There is nothing more satisfying than laughing until your stomach
hurts, and there is an inexplicable power in sharing laughter with others- even
complete strangers…Humor and laughter are restorative forces and, even in the
darkest of times, can help us find meaning and purpose. To borrow from Mark
Twain: the human race has only one really effective weapon and that is
laughter.” (From the Internet)
Yes, we like to laugh around our church, and there is nothing like
laughter to start out off our times together. I believe humor makes you more
relatable, and yes, even a better professional. And laughter is really good
medicine, especially for those sometimes serious and challenging staff
meetings.
Someone said, "If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble. You
won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old.”
I am glad I am no stranger to laughter, and much of my laughter is
self-produced.
I finished umpiring a baseball game yesterday, only to discover I
could not locate the keys to my car. I proceeded to scour the field in hopes of
finding them, and even the high school coach returned to the field in search of
them. Twice I had carefully taken everything out of the trunk of my car
thinking I might have dropped them there, but they were nowhere to be found.
I was beginning to get that “Oh, Oh” feeling when I thought I
might have left them locked inside the car, and having never purchased a second
set of keys, I wasn’t sure that even "Triple A" would be able to
solve my immediate problem.
I called Jean who all too many times has been my secret lifeline,
but even she had no solution to my predicament. As we were talking, I knew she
was silently thinking to herself, “No, Not Again,” for I have a well-documented
history of doing some inexplicable and unexplainable things over the course of my
life.
It has now been twenty minutes since I discovered my keys were
missing, and just when I was out of ideas to remedy my situation, the school’s
athletic trainer stepped into the story. As I was sharing my dilemma, she
quietly asked, "What is that dangling from your lifted trunk
door?" And yes, there they were, all the time hanging from the keyhole of
my raised trunk.
Don’t ask me why I would not think to look for them there, for
after all I had to have the keys to open trunk. In that high school parking
lot, that trainer and I celebrated that wonderful discovery, and as we did, I
am sure she was thinking, “And this guy just umpired a high school baseball
game!”
The late great football coach at Michigan State once said, “You
need only three bones to journey successfully through life: a wishbone, to
dream on….a backbone for strength and courage to help you get through tough
times…and a funny bone, to laugh at life along the way, and believe me I have
had a lot to laugh about during some eight decades of my life.
So, in closing I want to encourage you to learn to laugh at
yourself. Keep smiling, keep laughing, even if it is at yourself, and keep a
bright spirit for “He who laughs-lasts.” And don't ever forget that “A cheerful
heart is good medicine” (Prov. 17:22).
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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