Holy Laughter

"A joyful heart is good medicine, 

But a broken spirit dries up the bones."

Proverbs 17:22

I've often thought that Christians should be the merriest people on earth. We have the abundant life in Christ now, as well as all of eternity with Him to which we can look forward. Of course there is a proper time for grief, and we should mourn over sin, but scriptures such as Proverbs 17:22 seem to support my theory that God approves of laughter. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Charles Spurgeon included a chapter called "Pure Fun" in his autobiography, in which he writes, "It is a sort of tradition of the fathers that it is wrong to laugh on Sundays. The eleventh commandment is, that we are to love one another; and then, according to some people, the twelfth is, 'Thou shalt pull a long face on Sunday.' I must confess that I would rather hear people laugh than I would see them asleep in the house of God; and I would rather get the truth into them through the medium of ridicule than I would have it neglected, or leave the people to perish through lack of reception of the message. I do believe, in my heart, that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two. . ." Hmmm, holy laughter. I like it.