Let your heart by merry.
-Judges 19:6
Some people think it is difficult to be a Christian and to
laugh, but I think it’s the other way around. God writes a lot of comedy, it’s just that he has so many
bad actors.
-Garrison Keillor
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope
of new possibilities.
-Jean Houston
Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of
prayer.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
Laughter, joy, play and frivolous nonsense are things very
close to the core of the real Christian religion and the purpose of human
life. It is an article of faith
that God invented pleasure and that the forces of opposing pleasure are in fact
opposed to God.
I do not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious. Or, if you prefer the phrase, it is the fashion of all false
religions. The man who takes
everything seriously is the man who makes an idol of everything: he bows down
to wood and stone until his limbs are rooted as the roots of the tree or his
head as fallen as the stone sunken by the roadside.
Taking oneself too seriously causes us to forget the great
commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your mind.
In enjoying God-given pleasures we are loving God; in letting other
things destroy that enjoyment we are putting those things before God.
It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of
play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that
the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a play-ground. To be at last in such secure innocence
that one can juggle the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can
treat everything as a joke—that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday
of human souls. When we are really
holy we may regard the universe as a lark…that extreme degree of holiness which
I have postulated as a necessary preliminary to such indulgence in the higher
frivolity.
Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the
gigantic secret of the Christian. It should be a high compliment to a man’s
spirituality and imagination to say he is a little giddy.
In anything that does cover the whole of your life—in your
philosophy and your religion—you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.
-G.K. Chesterton
Laughter is the foundation of reconciliation.
-St. Francis de Sales
It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t fear death’, but to laugh
out loud somehow drives the idea home. It embodies our theology.
-Rev. Laura Gentry
Laughter is God’s hand on the shoulder of a troubled world.
-Bettenell Huntznicker
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is
laughter.
-Mark Twain
When you laugh, aside from the endorphin rush,
there’s also a spiritual opening. You’re not so tight inside yourself. That
opening I’ve found to be a real gift, in people being able to absorb
spirituality.
-Rabbi Sydney Mintz
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
-Anne Lamott
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know
the man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of
weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better
results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man…All I
claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human
nature.
-Feodor Dostoyevsky
When you laugh, you get a glimpse of God.
-Merrily Belgum
When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt
your head back and laugh at the sky.
-Buddha
A joyful heart is good medicine.
-Proverbs 17:22
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