Day 52: "Don’t Feel Guilty: It’s OK to Laugh"

DAY 52

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

WEEK EIGHT: TUESDAY 5 MAY 2020

 Don’t Feel Guilty: It’s OK to Laugh

“Throughout history humor has played a role in the darkest times, as a psychological salve and a shared release. Large swaths of the population are living in isolation, instructed to eye with suspicion any stranger who wanders within six feet. And coronavirus jokes have become a form  of contagion themselves, providing a remaining thread to the outside world for the isolated -  and perhaps to sanity itself.” - “Don’t Feel Guilty: It’s OK to Laugh at Some of This” 23 April 2020 newspaper article

“Mary Berg, a 15-year-old trapped by Nazis in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, wrote in a diary entry from Oct. 29, 1941: ‘The typhus epidemic itself is the subject of jokes. It is laughter through tears, but it is laughter. This is our only weapon in the ghetto.’” And this from Renee Firestone, an Auschwitz survivor: “The instinct to laugh showed that we were still human beings while in the camps; this inner sense of humor is what kept me alive.” Narratives recorded in the documentary “The Last Laugh” about humor in the ghettos and death camps of WWII.

‘Listen’ to the testimonies of Abraham, in Genesis 17:17, and Sarah, in Genesis 18:12, when told by God they would bear a son: “Abraham fell face down, he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a  hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’” “So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’” And after the birth of Isaac, more laughter in Genesis 21:6 – “Sarah said, ’God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.’”  

Look at what God promises to those who weep: not peace or comfort but laughter in the beatitude in Luke 6:21 – “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” The God who made our bodies wired them to release dopamine when we laugh, and our blood pressure to drop when we let go in the midst of grief or anger and laugh. He knows what He’s doing.

“He who sits in the heavens shall laugh,” Psalm 2:4 says of the God who made everything, and if He can laugh, seeing all He sees going on in the world, perhaps its OK for us to laugh a bit as well. Pandemic ‘humor’: “Shouldn’t we wait until after the pandemic to fill out the census?”

Reflective Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:4 – “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh…” 

Reflective hymn:

“Give to Us Laughter” – Walter Farquharson (1936 -    )

Sung to the same hymn tune as “Be Thou My Vision”                                

Even in sorrow and hours of grief, laughter with tears brings most healing relief.

God, give us laughter, and God, give us peace, joys of your promise among us increase.