A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 17:22, ESV)
Many of the Links Players staff gathered in California last week for what proved to be some very fruitful meetings. Several national board members were able to check in as well, so the camaraderie wasn’t lacking. But when it came to our time on the golf course, we wish you could have been there. We needed more of you out there to laugh along with us at the ineptitude we all seemed to display on an uncommonly cold day. “Our play was so bad,” Marty Jacobus said of his foursome, “we wouldn’t step in front of a guy who made par.”
Sometimes it’s hard to laugh when things are going poorly. But just as we wouldn’t refuse a doctor’s prescription when we are sick, we can’t set to sulking instead of ingesting the medicine God says is good for us.
“A joyful heart” is that medicine, Solomon lined among his Proverbs. But what is a joyful heart, and does laughter really fit into its definition?
A balanced life knows when to make room for laughter.Certainly, we can get to laughing about many wrong things. A.W. Tozer’s rules for self-discovery closed with this question: “What do I laugh at?” When we make light of another’s downfall or join the chorus of laughter at the crude jokes of a careless golf buddy, we’re convicted by Tozer’s question. We should be cut by Scripture as well, for the Lord himself laughs at the wicked for another reason: “He knows their day is coming” (Psalm 37:13).
There are times, too, when we should not be laughing at all. Solomon’s dichotomies in Ecclesiastes noted that there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and James wrote of a purifying time when our laughter should be turned to mourning and our joy to gloom (James 4:9). Sobriety must be given its place.
But a balanced life knows when to make room for laughter. Sarah was called out for her laughter by God himself, when she chuckled with disbelief that she would have a child. But when that baby was born, she named him Isaac (meaning he laughs) because “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6). This was a happy woman, who did not hold back her laughter.
And the noble woman of Proverbs 31 “can laugh at the days to come,” because she has, in her discipline and care, prepared herself and those around her to land joyfully.
On the whole, that day with our staff on the golf course may have been a Proverbs 14:13 moment—“Even in laughter the heart may ache”—but it was a day when we were living life together. May you have such a day among the seven the Lord brings you this week.
—
Jeff Hopper
January 28, 2020
Copyright 2020 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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