Besides the gloom and doom of America's financial mess ("greed finally caught up with us!!!"; I have been working in my church's resource ministry to the needy and ex offenders. Wow! Working in a cubicle and overhearing phone conversations to people facing foreclosure; being evicted from rental properties; sick with limited funds from being out of work; etc. I need a lift. So, I'm assuming you come to the end of this serious week in America with the need of a laugh.
I'm studying humorists and one of my favorites is the late, Barbara Johnson.
http://www.barbaraspatulajohnson.com/
Barabara had great tragedies in her life in a few years. During a Christianity Today interview she said that she stayed positive by, "God has fine-tuned me. I lost my dad when I was twelve, then I lost one son and then the next son. So I've been through a lot of losses. One son was lost in Vietnam and one killed by a drunk driver. I think because I have been through that and I have experienced a lot of pain that I have credentials. They have to listen to me. I'm not just being funny telling jokes. I have been in the pits. I have been where I wanted to die, where I wanted to kill myself and to kill anyone else (laughs). I've come through it, and God has infused me with a lot of joy. That's what I want to use, to get into my books as I share my books with people so they can use it and be a conduit of God's love too."
Barbara, "Getting an emotional makeover doesn't involve denying your problems; it welcomes trials full-strength, all the time saying, "Lord, I accept each day as it comes, filtered through your love. In these troubles I choose joy." I choose joy by refusing to accept the lie that I have to feel miserable about the baggage, the stuff that trails me no matter how I try to hide or outwit it. I do zany, kooky, funny things to make myself and others laugh. One verse that encourages me to get and to stay in good humor is Job 8:21 "He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy." Laughter is the most inexpensive, non-flattening, contagious,pleasant way to release stress. One laugh equals 3 spoons of oatbran and burns 6 calories. Laughing is like jogging on the inside. God's given me the ability to make amusement a ministry, and I praise Him for it, because laughter brings healing.
Proverbs 11:25 "He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." I'm grateful God allowed my broken life to become a fountain of joy for others. For when you pour out God's love on others, it boomerangs right back to you! "
So.......let's go.... and I'm trusting Holy Spirit revs you up to laugh outrageously with me and many times this weekend!!
As Barbara says we're going to set ourselves up for a good healthy laugh!As a new bride I was a novice cook, and I took a scientific approach to cooking. I got the best cookbooks and measured accurately. Somehow I never got around to learning how to operate the ancient gas stove in our efficiency apartment. Nothing was legible on the dials and I just winged the lighting of the oven, etc.
One Sunday morning I had decided to wow my groom with a spectacular breakfast. I eased out of bed so he could sleep while I whipped up a gourmet masterpiece. I donned my fuzzy chenille robe; rolled up my hair in huge curlers...this was the sixties and I had to have my BiGGGGG hair; and then I slipped on my stretchy ruffled hair cap to cover my curlers.
Down the stairs I ran to jump on this project. I studied the cookbook while I turned on the gas for the oven. Then I started frying some sausage. "Oops I need to light the oven." That flame shot up quickly when I struck the match. I shut the door and proceeded to lose myself in the recipe instructions and frying that sausage.
Bam!! a flame shot out of that oven door that knocked me against the wall. Flames were flying through the chenille tufts of my robe, and then my ruffles on my cap caught on fire. I ran to the bottom of the stairs and screamed, "John...help....help John!!!" Oh, my man was to the rescue ....he jumped out of bed and grabbed his steady shotgun; cocked it and hit the stairs in lightening speed. I was smoking, black and almost unrecognizable. I'm thinking, "I'm on fire and he's going to shoot me !" "John....it's me, Kay....I'm on fire!!!"
He looked stunned, put the shotgun down and came to help me. I wasn't hurt....the robe looked like cheesecloth; the fire ate up each tuft without getting to me; the ruffles of the cap ate up the flames and except for singed eyebrows I was fine.
Now why would my Southern man think shotgun when I yelled "help?" Well....we sorta' do that down here in the deep South. But this morning I understood. As we were getting off to sleep we had watched the 11 o'clock news. There had been a break-in several blocks from our inner city apartment. It frightened both of us. Obviously he assumed we'd been hit by the same at large criminal. Oh, I thank God he didn't shoot soot covered smoking me!
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