Ecclesiastes

Give thanks for laughter.

What makes you smile today? What tickles your sense of humor?

         Laughter alleviates stress. Laughter expresses joy. Humor helps humans cope with the most challenging of circumstances. Laughter floods the body with good chemistry; it promotes healing and resilience.

         Give thanks for what amuses, delights, or surprises you. Cherish a smile someone else shares with you, that invites you to smile back. Or the laugh that springs up from deep inside you when something strikes you in a whimsical way.

 Take time to read the funny anecdote, look at the silly photo, or watch the slapstick video shared with you by friends. Give time and space to encourage laughter. Appreciate that people share such gifts with you.

As we’ve studied as a faith community, humor is holy. Laughter is a gift: a capacity that is part of how humans are designed. When you laugh, you send joy reverberating up to heaven. — Rev Gail

Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” —Genesis 21:6

He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy. — Job 8:21

For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
— Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile. — Elie Wiesel

We need laughter in our lives. Laughter is carbonated holiness. — Anne Lamott

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. — Reinhold Niebuhr