Praying with Our Sense of Humor
Praying with our sense of humor can be as natural and as pleasant and as beneficial as we let it be. We presume praying is serious business and it is. It can also be as playful and as joyful and as releasing as we let it be. It only takes a little humor.
Humor is a life skill: hum….human…humor
Research says that both men (90%) and women (81%) believe that humor is the most important characteristic in a successful life partner. If humor has the power to make a our human relationships succeed, it must have the same power on our spiritual relationship with God. Or maybe greater power.
Humor lightens what’s heavy.
One time I started to pray for forgiveness about something rather shameful I had done. I spent some time and energy building the courage to take it to prayer. When I finally was ready—or thought I was ready—I started my prayer, “God, you’re not going to believe this…” Then had to stop short and laugh thinking I could surprise Spirit. The prayer flowed easily from there.
Photo by Stormy All on Unsplash
You cannot worry and laugh at the same time.
If love replaces fear, then humor in the form of laughter, replaces worry. It’s not possible to laugh and worry at the same time. That’s multitasking, and if you don’t believe me, believe science that tells us multitasking is really impossible.
I know three people who are incessant laughers. The other thing I know about them worrying is this: they don’t very much.
Humor is a good stress eraser.
Their laughter is always present when any of the three is discussing something stressful. Or when they are about to discuss that something. It’s a certainty that the laughter lets them erase the stress and go forward with the discussion. Now, think about the most common reasons for which we pray, not counting thanksgiving. Aren’t most of those prayers to get us over, around, or through something stressful? So if praying is good for easing stress and humor is good for erasing stress….praying with humor must make it easy to erase the stress.
God has a sense of humor, too.
Still doubt it? How about this…
You’ve surely heard the adage, Make plans, God laughs. Growing up I was always making big plans for a sleepover or a bike ride or camping out in the backyard. My parents—OK, mostly Dad—would laugh. With that laughter always came the offer to help make the plan succeed. It usually did.
We notice the power of a sense of humor. Consider how much, how often we evaluate each other’s sense of humor. If we are spiritually in God’s image, where else does our sense of humor come from?
Besides all that, would so many things be funny to all of us, to some of us, or maybe just to you, if God didn’t have something to do with it?
Praying with Humor
Laughing Spirit, what a pleasure to imagine
your being the completeness of humor
as you are the completeness of joy
and peace and love and harmony.
The gift of letting us know our praying
can turn the corner from serious to funny
is the wonderful realization that prayers
can let us laugh rather than make us be stern.
I am thankful I still laugh at the seriousness
of Michael asking our Vacation Bible School teacher
“After we pray, why do we say ‘amen’?
Jesus was a man, wasn’t he?”
And so it is. A-man.
Love & blessings,
25 January 2021
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