Humor Sunday!
“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a
good ending, and to have the two as close together as possible.”
— George Burns
Rev. David brings us a humorous talk, filled with words to live by, and words to make you laugh!
Here are the 12 major points of this enjoyable talk:
- Bringing light into apparent darkness is part of our calling.
Jesus tells us we are the light of the world, a light that should not be hidden beneath a bushel of fear, doubt, and concern, but proudly placed on a stand, so that light can illuminate, lift up, and invigorate the weary around us and ourselves.
Check please! That’s ALL I needed to hear! But he goes on…
2. Stand in the Truth of our very being.
“We must learn to stand in the Truth of our very being, as expressions of God, and allow our light to pour out through us, in every thought, word, and action, to the best of our ability. I think this is our calling.”
3. A cheerful heart.
Tending to our cheerful hearts is a much needed (necessary) exercise!
Now THAT is an exercise I can get behind!!!
STORY/JOKE #1:
Andrew was watching his father, a minister, write a sermon.
‘How do you know what to say?’ Andrew asked.
‘Why, God tells me’, the father replied.
‘Oh, then why do you keep crossing things out?’
How often do we find ourselves, like this minister, editing that
which we are called to share/ called to be?
Feel too old, too tired, too overwhelmed to follow that guidance? So you sit back, waiting for someone you deem more “qualified” to fill the role that whispers in our heart to be filled by us?
STORY/JOKE #2:
A child and his father were visiting an elderly neighbor. They
were raking the neighbor’s leaves, organizing the neighbor’s
garage, putting the trash out, and performing other small jobs
around the neighbor’s house. The child had not really seen the
elderly neighbor up close, but on this day the child was going to
meet the neighbor up close for the first time. When the child met
the neighbor up close he asked the neighbor how old he was,
and the father was flabbergasted by his child’s question and
attempted to apologize to the neighbor, but the neighbor
laughed and said that was ok, the child is curious. The elderly
neighbor told the child he was 92 years old. The child had a look
of unbelief and asked the neighbor, “Did you start at the number one?”
4. Learning from infants.
Infants begin smiling during their first few weeks, and laughing out loud within months of being born. Studies suggest that children K-12 laugh between 200 and 400 times a day! Compare that to the 17 times a day the average adult laughs, and you might be left wondering “what happens?”
In short, life.
Or better ~ our orientation in life shifts from joy and wonder, to worry about the past, the present, and the future.
Another study says women are ten times more likely to smile and
laugh than men. Women statistically outlive men by about ten years…
Maybe that explains why they’re laughing!
5. Laughter is healing.
Sharing the light within us has never been more necessary. Laughter is healing. The joy of laughter can draw us together. A simple chuckle now and again has the ability to rewire our way of thinking. It can flood our bodies with healthy endorphins, boost our immune systems, and, let’s face it, causes us to stop, take a breath, and possibly discover a new perspective in those moments when life seems just a little too tough to bear.
STORY/JOKE #3:
After a very long and boring sermon the congregation filed out
of the church saying nothing to the preacher. Towards the end
of the line was a thoughtful person who always commented on
the sermons. “Pastor, today your sermon reminded me of the
peace and love of God!” The pastor was thrilled. “No one has
ever said anything like that about my preaching before. Tell me
why.” “Well — it reminded me of the Peace of God because it
passed all understanding and the Love of God because it
endured forever!”
TODAY’S SCRIPTURE
Proverbs 17:22
A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.
6. The heart and meditation.
Now the heart, like any other muscle, can be conditioned toward better health, physical exercise improves the heart’s ability to move oxygen through our bodies, and supports a psychological sense of self-care and
well-being.
Meditation improves our ability to stabilize and regulate the
heartbeat, and provides both psychological and emotional support in
times of stress.
Speaking of the anatomical heart, such conditioning also influences our heart as a wisdom center! Studies show that laughter has similar effects on the body, increasing healthy vascular flow, alleviating stress and depression. It improves our mental outlook on life. It is even shown to reduce blood sugars! And laughter, shared with others, increases our sense of well-being through connection, and enables us to more easily settle
disagreements, and release resentments.
Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, describes the heart as “the place through which humanity receives love from God”.
7. Love is healing.
Love is the binding, harmonizing principle with the
potential to draw all humanity together. It is an innate quality that, as we choose to live from it, sees or seeks good in everyone and everything we
encounter.
Love is capable of bringing healing to both our physical bodies and our relationships.
SO, this cheerful heart ~ the heart open to being a portal for God’s boundless love, is a heart that is steady, calm, beautifully expressing the joy and all other attributes of God, through the presence of Christ indwelling.
It is the divine image of perfection in which we are all made.
We develop a capacity to express our love and ourselves in our own unique way. It is a heart that remains, at the center of our being, steady and
calm, in the presence of anything that might disturb our peace.
Satirist, Voltaire, says:
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while
nature cures the disease.”
In Jesus Christ Heals, Fillmore writes:
“All healing systems recognize joy as a beneficent factor in the
restoration of health to the sick….one of the most direct and
effective shatterers of fear is laughter. Laugh your fears away.
See how ridiculous they are when traced to their source.”
8. No candy-coating here!
Now, I know some might think he is suggesting we just sidestep our experiences, candy-coating and then ignoring our feelings. Let’s expand what he shares, though, and look more deeply at them. Let’s recognize the source of our own worries and fears, based on conditions as we see them, and explore our ability to release them.
He goes on to say:
“…the only permanent cure for [the] ailment is trust in God as
the one and only source of good…
Back to that Scripture about the dry bones…
9. What could possibly bring about those “dry bones” in us?
If we are created in the image and likeness of God, and God is love, then it seems to me that a cheerful heart would be as natural to us as breathing, and our heartbeat.
What would cause us to live any other way?
STORY/JOKE #4:
Someone goes up to a personal trainer and asks “Can you teach
me to do the splits?”
The trainer says, “How flexible are you?”
and they reply, “I can’t make Tuesdays.”
When we begin to see ourselves as separate from God and each
other, we are, in effect, separating ourselves from the life-giving
flow of love we obstruct or close the portal of our hearts, and become mesmerized by what we see in the world around us. We become inflexible to the possibility of seeing or seeking good when it isn’t readily visible. We surrender the world we wish to see ~ one where being loving and of service is our daily practice of the rigidity of conditions we presume to be too great to overcome.
We profess a belief in the One Power and Presence in the universe. But how often at the first sign of inconvenience or a need to change our own minds on a thing, do we see only the obstacles, and shrink away from all that is possible through God, by whatever name you know that presence.
As Source and supply, dry bones, a man died and was met by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates who said, “To give us a more complete picture of you, can you tell me one incident from your life that showed you to be of high
character, noble, and courageous? The man thought for a
moment, then said,
“I once came upon a group of bikers who were harassing an elderly man in the parking lot of a truck stop. I was so angry at what I was witnessing, but I knew that I had to let my cool head prevail. So I ran over and kicked over
their motorcycles.” St. Peter was impressed and said, “Wow! When did this happen?” To which the man replied, “Oh, about two minutes ago.”
HA HA!
Despite our best efforts, there are times when things just don’t
go as planned. Some minor disagreement becomes a breathtakingly
difficult argument. A planned pleasant afternoon becomes an endless thread of upsetting texts. The weight of everything happening around us becomes too much. And we just feel that urge to react.
Fight fire with fire!
Give someone a piece of our mind. Put them in their place and take control of a situation by any means necessary, rather than finding ways to act or deliver our message, with a sense of compassion for our neighbor. We are rattling those old dry bones, and the noise from that rattling drowns out any possibility for listening, or understanding.
Would that we, in those times, learn to draw from the wellspring of joy within us. And, even though we feel ready to wage war inside our
heads, we could choose to let our hearts take the lead.
What if we let the love, that seeks to flow through us, move uninhibited, breathing new life and new perspective into each moment.
And hey, I know that sometimes there are negative feelings that
simply need to be vented! Find a trusted confidant and share ~ go for a drive and shout it out. Close your door and dance it off. There are a million ways that we can shake off that need to “kick the motorcycles”. Without completely robbing ourselves of joy. It might even make space for you to find a drop of humor in the moment. Try to dance off some anger in a mirror sometime.
Hilarious!
10. How enlightened are you?
ARE YOU AS ENLIGHTENED AS YOUR PET?
IF you can live without caffeine,
IF you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains ,
IF you can resist complaining,
IF you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give
you any time,
IF you can take criticism and blame without resentment,If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct
him or her,
IF you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend…
IF you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no
prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender preference, or
politics…
…THEN you might have almost reached the same level of spiritual
development… as your family pet!
Big shout-out to our furry, fuzzy, feathery little gurus!
11. Our way shower, Jesus Christ.
Humor, laughter, joy ~ each of these and all of our innate spiritual gifts are truly just an attitude of the heart. It’s an attitude that does its best to live each day following the example of our elder brother, and way shower, Jesus the Christ. It’s a way of being and seeing the world that acknowledges
need, and allows us to show up in some helpful manner, whether it be a consciousness of prayer or some other guided expression of the love in which you are created.
Author, Vera Robinson, says:
“Humor is first and foremost an attitude towards life; a
willingness to accept life and to accept ourselves with a
shrug and a smile, with a certain lightheartedness.”
12. How to keep things light!
Here are a few of the many ways you can incorporate more joy, humor, and laughter into your life:
* Start the day with a smile. Smiling can set the tone for the day.
If you are wearing a smile, you won’t have a distressed look on
your face.
* Spend time with fun, playful people. These are people who
laugh easily and who routinely find humor in everyday events.
Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious. Even if
you don’t consider yourself a lighthearted, humorous person,
you can still seek out people who like to laugh and make others
laugh.
* Learn to laugh at yourself. Learn to not take yourself so
seriously. Laughing at yourself is a great place to start.
* Bring humor into conversations.
Ask people, “What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today? This week? In your life?”
* Visualize being happy.
Think about occasions that have made you happy. This will help focus your attention on more pleasant thoughts, as opposed to more stressful thoughts. One good way to bring yourself to that happy place ~ give some love to those fuzzy, furry, feathery friends!
* Get out of your head!
Sure, there’s a spiritual solution to every challenge, but that doesn’t mean every challenge is a spiritual one. One way to lighten up ~ let those ordinary “human oopses” be just that ~ don’t overthink or try to interpret. Just chuckle and move on!
Last but certainly not least:
*Pray.
Call forth the divinity within you, and allow it to help you
lighten up and see the fun side of life.
YOUR HOMEWORK!
An invitation to prayerfully consider lightening up a bit…
Shake the joy of life back into those dry bones with a good hearty laugh every now and then.
Let that cheerful heart shine.
Be the radiant light you are meant to be.
