Dear Lord

Does the loud ticking
Of my alarm clock
Keep you awake?

Do you lie thinking
The stars in the sky
Were a big mistake?
~Charles Simic “Dear Lord” from No Land in Sight

So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear…

The tremendous figure which fills the Gospel never concealed His tears. Yet He concealed something…

He never restrained His anger. Yet He restrained something…

There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or imperious isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
G.K. Chesterton in his closing words of Orthodoxy

We see humor in the Bible–irony, puns, absurdity, parodies, paradox- yet we miss hearing the laughter of the heavens as we are simply too close to the joke to get it. In fact, we are likely the punch line of the joke more often than not. 

God shows remarkable restraint when it comes to observing the absurd and hilarious antics of His children. We don’t see verses such as, “Jesus laughed” or “Jesus smiled” or “Jesus stifled a chuckle”  even though He surely had plenty of opportunity. Either that or He perhaps God wrote us off as a big mistake.

Obviously, He hasn’t written us off. We’re still here and so is He.

We often take ourselves too seriously. A little joy and joke can’t hurt. Listening carefully, we just might hear the laughter of heaven itself.