Monday, September 26, 2011

you gotta laugh

Sometimes you gotta laugh...actually if you want to survive life, you need to laugh a lot. About 13 years ago, I wrote a youth ministry book called "How Teens Do Church" and one of the chapters was entitled "church should be fun". Well, I'm now doing church with people older than teen-agers and I still believe that church should be a fun place. One of the things that many friends have expressed when they come to Eastview is that they feel like we have fun. It may be the immaturity of the Sr. Pastor (although I'm very reserved compared to what is actually happening in my brain most of the time). I think it's something different than that though...I think laughing is spiritual.

Psalm 126:2 (part of a holiday praise song in Jerusalem) says that laughter is a part of worship - "our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy"! It makes complete sense to me that those who have the joy of the Lord in their hearts should laugh. Laughing is one of my favorite things to do. Proverbs 17:22 says that a cheerful heart (laughter) is good medicine. There are actually studies that show people who laugh more are healthier, but I don't care about that...it's just fun (and I think very holy) to laugh. I'll say it stronger...I think laughing is a form of worship.

Love laughing with friends most, love laughing with strangers in a movie theatre or comedy club, love laughing at myself when I do or say dumb things (happens a lot to me), I love laughing when people are laughing with me or at me, I love laughing at the funny stuff we find in the Bible and I love it when I think I've said something funny in a sermon and the congregation laughs with me! And so, we made this funny video (on our website soon - eastviewchurch.net) to be the crazy dream sequence that led into our dream passage from Acts 10. It was funny, because as funny as I think I may be....our worship pastor Matt Ludwig is comedic genius! Seriously, maybe the funniest cat I've ever met. We laugh together a lot! And we laughed while we were filming this video...a lot. And when we showed it Sunday everyone was laughing. Church was fun.

So hope you laugh today...and when you do, I hope you think of me laughing and more importantly that you thank God for this incredible gift and that you can laugh because of the hope and joy you have in Him!

4 comments:

Bob said...

Moo!

Tim said...

Brilliant, funny, and simply fun. Matt is a unique combination of extremely talented and extremely funny.. Love coming on Sunday to hear the Word preached and to feel like family. Gonna be hard to top last week though..

Matt Ludwig said...

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY second Mike's blog, not about me being a funny cat (or cow, as it were), but the spiritualness of laughing. I thank God for His gift of laughter!!

BTW....Mike Baker could make a living being funny. He does make us laugh!

maquinn78 said...

It's now on Eastview's Facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/eastviewchristianchurch