“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. . . The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” – Psalm 126:2,3
Army basic training, for those of us who have experienced it, is hardly a laughing matter; that is, unless you had the good fortune as I did to have a guy like Al Williams constantly at your side. For eight weeks the two of us, because we were alphabetical – Williams and Wilson – stood side-by-side in formation, bunked next to each other in the barracks, and were training partners much of the time. Al with his hilarious sense of humor kept me in stitches, making my boot camp a barrel of laughs instead of the grueling experience it could have been. The most difficult thing I had to endure was keeping a straight face so I wouldn’t get yelled at for inappropriately busting out laughing over something he had just whispered to me while we were standing at attention.
For as long as I can remember Reader’s Digest magazine has included a joke section called “Laughter, the Best Medicine” which I believe to be true in that laughter has contributed to my own good health most of my life. Even now, Tee and I start each day by chuckling over the comic section in the newspaper, and sometimes end the day by reading a few jokes before turning out the light from Garrison Keillor’s Pretty Good Joke Book, a copy of which I keep on the beside-table. Laughter is indeed great medicine.
Life, as we all know, like basic training is at times no laughing matter . . . that is, unless you can see the humor in it. Humor, though, is not about being less serious about life; rather it helps keep life and our role in it in perspective. Even though my army buddy and I laughed our way through boot camp we did take the training with the life-and-death seriousness for which it was intended.
Humor and laughter are gifts from God, comical versions of our human failings, reminding us that only God is perfect, and we are not. But God has a great ability to restore us from our imperfections, and when that occurs as the Psalmist reminds us, “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. . . The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” Life is hardly a laughing matter; unless, of course, you happen to have God constantly by your side like Al Williams was to me in boot camp, bringing joy to our lives instead of the grueling experience it could be.