April 24, 2000
CYBERCOLUMN:
Laughter does a family good
___I'm sitting here under the old oak tree pondering the ways of the world. News of an early morning raid sweeps across our continent. Drought dehydrates portions of Africa. Devastation and poverty plague Eastern Europe. And here in Granbury, I hear worrisome talk on the square about the volatile stock market. We live a world where pain shouts and laughter stills the night with silence. Here under the old oak tree as the fresh wind blows,I'm hopeful of a world where we hear the rattle of laughter.
JOHN DUNCAN
___ I'm pondering the world but remembering the rattle of laughter in our home not too long ago.
___ "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone." I am not sure what Ella Wheeler Wilcox was thinking when she wrote her poem "Solitude" in her "Collected Poems" in 1917. Was she envisioning a dinner table discussion that brought barrels of laughter?
___ Saturday afternoon came in grand style. The lazy sun started its daily downward plunge. Long shadows fell across the back porch. Three Duncan girls bounced and giggled on the trampoline.
___ "Daddy, will you jump?" came a voice from a body hang-gliding in midair.
___ "No, not right now. I am grilling the chicken." I stood by the gas grill, dividing my time between flipping the chicken and watching the bouncers take flight on the trampoline.
___ My Martha Stewart impersonation completed, I called to the girls, "Time to come in and eat."
___ "Just a few more minutes on the trampoline, please, Daddy, pleeeease!!!" I know that's not how you spell "please," but that's what it sounds like when parents bark orders and children try to buy a few more minutes to do something they enjoy.
___ After a short time, everyone in our family arrived at the dinner table and sat in their chairs. A prayer was spoken by one of our girls: "I thank you, God, for our family. Thank you for the pretty day. Help Jenifer's basketball team to win a game. Thank you for the chicken and other stuff. Amen. Dig in." She probably picked up that last phrase at a youth pizza function at the church.
___ The meal went nicely. The conversation about school, work, friends, baby dolls and the like flowed freely. I finished my glass of ice water and decided I would go to the sink for more. I began to scoot my chair back, when an unusual thing happened.
___ I sat in an antique chair with a flowery-patterned-cloth seat. The chair had been hammered, glued, refinished and who knows what else who knows how many times. As I scooted my chair back, the chair popped, the wood cracked, and dumped me seat first right into the floor! The chair lay in six pieces while I sprawled on the floor. I was reminded of the Psalmist (11:5) who said, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"
___ I saw no faces, nor could mine be seen, but I heard barrels of laughter. This laughter was not the hee-hee kind, but the hee-haw, snorting, side-splitting kind you get when spontaneity grabs your laugher and turns up the volume. Finally, an "Are you all right?" entered my ears between the laughter.
___ I laughed, too. And for some reason, the laughter got louder when I slowly rose from the pile of wood. Laugh and the world laughs with you. I recovered from my mini-free-fall, tossed the chair in the fireplace, and determined that the Bible is right, "A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones" (Proverbs 17:22). Laughter does a family good.
___ But weep and you weep alone. I could not help but think that we live in world where people's lives shatter, sending them on painful falls, a world where foundations are destroyed daily. It's a world where homes splinter, where relationships crash, where sin takes its victims kicking and screaming on a downward plunge. It's a world where broken spirits dry weary bones. What kind the righteous do?
___ For one thing, we can learn to laugh at ourselves once in a while. Bring laughter to the world. Why not?
___ For another, we might offer to pick up those who fall. Isn't this what the gospel is about? Restoring one's fallen nature, replacing it with the power of God? Isn't this what the Apostle Paul encouraged the Galatians to do? To bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ? To pick others up?
___ For another, we might weep with the hurting so they do not have to weep alone.
___ And always, should I say again, always, check your chair before you sit down or scoot back. If you do fall, though, remember the experience: Pick yourself up, and get a glass of ice water. Or, as the gospels say, give a cup of cold water in Jesus' name. For there's happiness in laughter, joy in rising to walk again and glory in helping others.
___ Does anybody have a chair for sale?
___ John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines
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