By
Shelby G. Floyd
Don’t all of you enjoy a congregation where people have a smile on their faces instead of a frown? I do not think any of us enjoy being around grouchy and grumpy people. It pulls us down. To have a good laugh lifts us up. I have been preaching about 45 years, or something like that, and I have never preached on the subject of laughter. So I felt I needed to do that.
It is revealing when you go to the Bible and start doing research to find out the Bible has a quite a bit to say about laughter. In Ecclesiastes 3: 4 Solomon says there is “A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” Have you ever seen anyone that would cause you to laugh? If you will go to the mall you will see all kinds of people, wearing all kinds of outlandish outfits, and sometimes it is just fun to go over there and sit down and have some good laughs, because people are funny. Solomon says: “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh.” That tells us that God wants us to be cheerful. He does not want us to go around frowning and mourning, being sad and weeping and wailing all of the time. There is a time to do that, but not all the time!
Someone said: “Laugh often, dream big and reach for the stars.” “A laugh is a smile that bursts out.” “Laughter is the spark of the soul.” Someone else said, “Laughter is an instant vacation.” We all need some vacations. We can take that kind of a vacation everyday if we laugh a little bit. God wants us to be joyful and glad. Even God has a sense of humor. We say that because when we raise our children we find out what our parents went through, and now God is allowing us to go through the same thing. We say God has a sense of humor because we are experiencing what our parents experienced with us. As we have heard it said, “It is not a sin to grin.” Some people think you should never smile, laugh, or grin in the church. It is not a sin to grin, but it is a sin to worry yourself to death. It is better to grin, be happy, smile and laugh than to be filled with worry and die a premature death. Continue reading “A Time to Laugh”