Proverbs 17:22 – A merry heart does good like a medicine.
A sense of humor can lighten the darkest day. The Mayo Clinic reports that laughter activates and relieves your stress response, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and soothes tension. It may also stimulate your immune system by quelling the negative thoughts that impair it.
While the COVID-19 pandemic is nothing to laugh at, employing humor makes it less overwhelming. Even in trying times, according to Forbes, it’s important to make note of some of the funnier, and sometimes downright ridiculous, circumstances that you are facing today.
Try finding a few things every day that warrant a giggle—or better yet, a full-blown belly laugh. Watch funny videos or television shows. Look for humor in everyday events. A former presidential speech writer and Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, said, “Humor is the shock absorber of life; it helps us take the blows.”
The writer of Proverbs has given verses that are humorous with their parallelisms. “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). When you get the picture, it must make you smile. Or “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife” (Proverbs 21:9). A merry heart makes your face look cheerful (Proverbs 15:13).
Pray With Us
Heavenly Father, I recall my last trip to a zoo when I looked at some of the animals there and said to myself, “God certainly has a sense of humor.” I’m glad that You created our faces to smile, and our emotions to include laughter. Let me see joyful, if not humorous, things in my life today even amidst this time of struggling with staying at home or going out. Let my humor be pure and uncontaminated, and never at the expense of someone else. I delight in knowing You and discovering more of Your plans for me daily. Thank you, in Jesus Name.
Amen.
