A Little "Snack" - Food For Thought - Uma "Merendinha"

Hello there, dear visitors! Oi, caros visitantes (Que falam Inglês)!

I will be traveling in the south of the state of Parà, in which I live and work, until the end of this month of September, and that is why I won't be able to post anything next week-end; so I'm sending you a little "snack" to let your mind chew on something cool, until I come back. It's not music to hear, but those words are music to my hear! So, I hope you'll like and enjoy it!

Marc

PS: Desculpa aos que não falam Inglês; ainda não saiu a versão portuguesa!

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The poor homeless man wanted to impress the lady of the house with how hungry he was, thinking he’d get a good handout in the way of a good meal, so he got down on his hands and knees on the front lawn pretending to be eating grass. When the lady came out on the front porch and saw him she said, “Oh my dear, you poor man! Why don’t you go round in the backyard! The grass is much longer back there!”

The newsboy was standing on the street corner giving out newspapers in return for twenty-five-cent donations when someone walked up, took two papers, and handed him a quarter, saying grandly, “I want you to know, young man, that I don’t give you this because I feel that I have to or because I think it’s my duty or because I even think your paper’s worth it! I just enjoy giving!” To which the boy replied, “Well, mister, why don’t you give a dollar and have a real good time!”

We all need a good sense of humor. “A merry heart does good like medicine!”1 God created us with a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at things that are funny. So I’m sure He has a sense of humor, especially when I look at some of the things and people He has created and the funny situations He lets them get into.

Someone has said that a sense of humor is the ability to see the funny side of a serious situation and to laugh at things when they’re not the way they ought to be. Like the very formal preacher I knew who always wore a formal frock coat, or what we used to call “tie-n-tails” in the pulpit, similar to our modern tuxedo. He was so particular about the crease in his trousers that while waiting in his study for his part of the service to begin, during Sunday school, he would take them off and hang them up rather than sit down in them!

Until one Sunday morning he suddenly remembered, just as they were dismissing Sunday school, that he was supposed to make an important announcement to the children, so he quickly jumped up and dashed out of his office onto the platform, shouting, “Children, children! Just a moment! I have something very important to show you!” As the kids turned around and looked back at him on the platform, for a moment there was a stunned silence, followed by a roar of laughter as they looked at the preacher standing there with the announcement in his hand held high in the air and his bare knees clearly visible above the altar rail!

His congregation obviously had a good sense of humor! However, he did not! When he looked down to see what they were laughing at, he nearly fainted, and barely managed to stumble back into his office, where he collapsed, instead of being able to laugh at himself and his own ridiculous failure to remember to put his pants on before he went on the platform!

There is such a thing as being too serious and too sober about some things and taking some things too seriously, especially yourself! The ability to laugh at yourself and your own silly mistakes is a great asset and helps to keep you humble. But someone who can’t laugh at his own mistakes or take the mistakes of others with a sense of humor either has too much pride or too severe a sense of life.

God intended for us to enjoy living, and He has given us the ability, the senses, and the environment to enjoy it, including Himself. And our main purpose in life, as the saying goes, is “to love God and enjoy Him forever!”2 And, I might add, to help others enjoy life by helping them to do the same by telling them of God’s love and the happy life that they can have through knowing Him!

God created you to enjoy the life He’s given you and to love and enjoy Him forever, and to try to help others to do the same! If there’s anything in this world that Christians are supposed to be, it’s a happy people, because we’ve got more to be happy about than anyone else in the world! We have the happy love of Jesus, who takes all our burdens, carries all our cares, and even lightens our sorrows. Even of our service for Him, He says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.3

If you’re finding His yoke too hard or the burden of His service too heavy to bear, then maybe you’re transgressing by not obeying Him, not casting all your cares upon Jesus, for He careth for you. “Cast your burden on the Lord and He shall sustain you.”4 Let go and let God! Let Jesus do it! Don’t work so hard! Just let the Lord do it through you. Maybe you’re trying too hard instead of letting God do it by His power, His love, His grace, and His strength!

So quit taking yourself so seriously! Stop and praise the Lord and have a good laugh at your own weaknesses and ridiculous inability to do anything or accomplish anything for the Lord, knowing that if anything’s going to get done, it’s got to be the Lord who does it through you.

Smile! You’re on candid camera—God’s candid camera—and He wants you to be happy! Cheer up! Things could be a lot worse, and they probably will be, but why worry about it now? Fret not thyself for tomorrow! Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!5

I heartily agree with the young man who wrote me that we need to have more of a sense of humor, to be able to laugh at something funny, and mostly ourselves, instead of, as he put it, “practicing with balls and chains and thumbscrews today so we’ll be able to bear them tomorrow!” That’s not the way God does things. He doesn’t make you try to practice suffering today what you’re going to have to suffer tomorrow. He says, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!”

You’re not to add more to it in preparation for tomorrow, or to try to toughen yourself up for more evil tomorrow! You’re to enjoy today and take things as they come and let tomorrow take care of itself. “As your days, so shall your strength be!”6 God gives you power for the hour, grace for the trial—at the hour it comes, not before. So don’t worry about it!

When you’re weak, then you’re strong, and His strength is made perfect in your weakness. For His grace is sufficient for you.7 He takes the weak things to confound the mighty and the foolish things to confound the wisdom of the wise.8 “He’s not revealed these things unto the wise and prudent, but unto babes.”9 You’ve got to be a baby in the spirit in order to receive His wisdom!

If God can use us, He can use anybody, because we’re nobody, and you ought to absolutely crack up laughing at yourself and how ridiculous you are instead of trying to be too sober and taking yourself too seriously. If He can use you and me, He could even use Balaam’s ass! And He did!10

So for God’s sake and His work’s sake and your own sake, and especially for the sake of those around you, don’t try so hard and take yourself so seriously! It’s got to be God or you’ll never make it! That’s why He picked you! And that’s why people marvel, beholding the man, and knowing that it’s only because you’ve been with Jesus. They know it’s got to be God! They know it’s only Jesus! They know it’s a miracle of God that has changed your life. So why not have a good laugh at yourself and admit that it’s God that’s doing it all through you?

I once knew a dear old missionary who had evangelized Tibet for twenty-five years, four years of it behind communist lines, and I marveled at his humility and his grace and his blithely cheerful spirit. I thought what a great man he was and what a great work he had done and how famous he should have been. So I asked him a question, which I considered he of all people ought to know, and since I was planning to be a missionary myself. I asked him, “What do you think a missionary needs the most?”—expecting some solemn and profound answer from his greatly superior wisdom and vast wealth of years of experience.

So you can imagine how shocked I was when he said simply, with a sly smile, “A sense of humor—to be able to laugh when you feel like crying!” He said that, often, under the almost unbearable tension of the most frightening circumstances, a good laugh nearly saved their lives and their nerves! After all, if you know the Lord’s going to take care of it somehow, you can afford to smile and to laugh at how impossible the situation is, how ridiculous the circumstances are, and you know God’s got to do a miracle! So why not laugh about it?

We do have other things to do besides laugh. But for God’s sake, laugh while you’re doing them! And most of all, like my mother, be able to laugh at yourself and a good joke on yourself, because you’re the funniest thing God ever made, and you couldn’t be any more ridiculous! That ought to help keep you humble!

Humor certainly does help to humble you! There’s nothing like a good joke on yourself to keep us from getting so self-righteous and so super-sober and severely serious that we can’t enjoy a good joke on ourselves and can’t see how funny we are, how ridiculous we are, how nothing we are, and what a joke we are and what a good laugh God must get out of us and what He’s doing with us. What a joke! What a laugh we are!

For God’s sake, why don’t you break down that stupid self-righteous pride of yours and laugh at yourself—at how ridiculous and foolish you are to think you can save the world, when it’s only God that’s doing it through you, showing that even the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men!11

Have a good laugh at all your troubles! It’ll do you good, and it’ll do God good, because it’ll show Him you’re not worried but you’re still trusting Him! Praise the Lord!

We all need a good laugh. Have a sense of humor! Keep humble with good humor! Laugh at yourself. Just don’t overdo it, as there’s a time for everything. There’s a time to laugh, and a time to weep—a time for everything.12 But let’s always be able to smile through our tears. A ray of sunshine is even more beautiful in the midst of rain.

Let’s have a little more sunshine and laughter and not so much gloom and doom! Let’s give people a little more heaven! “Laugh and the world will laugh with you! Cry, and you’ll cry alone!”13 So let’s be happy!