Laughter – Holiness of Heart & Life https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net A view of heart holiness as my understanding is currently evolving. Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:41:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.29 Laughter in the House https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/laughter-in-the-house/ https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/laughter-in-the-house/#comments Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:12:00 +0000 http://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/?p=101 There was laughter in my house this last few weeks. There was joy and happiness. And that produced laughter. And I think that pleases God.

Psalm 126 says:

When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

How many times when we see the glorious work of God, it’s just like, well… it’s just like a dream. It’s just hard to comprehend. As we were together as a family this Christmas season, I was like someone who was dreaming. I look at what God has done for our family, and it’s like a dream. The reality has not yet sunk in.

And so the psalmist, “When God worked, delivered Zion, we were just like those that dream.” So excited in what God was doing. It is just that the reality of it hardly seems to register in my feeble brain.

“Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD has done great things for them”

Psalm 126:2

Oh, how special it is to just have that kind of joy and freedom to just be able to laugh over the good things that God has done.

“The LORD has done great things for us; whereof we are glad.”

Psalm 126:3

Is that an understatement, or what?

]]> https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/laughter-in-the-house/feed/ 1 Laughter https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/laughter/ https://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/laughter/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:55:00 +0000 http://heartholy.kevin-bowser.net/?p=121 We have been studying the book of Genesis in our Bible study class at church. And we have just crossed over from Abram to Abraham. There have been several instances of “laughing” or “laughter” that have caught my attention. Most of it revolves around Sarah and her response to hearing that she will bear a child. Or it revolves around her joy at the birth of Isaac as she acknowledges that it was God who brought forth this laughter.

Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Genesis 21:1-7 NIV

I am not sure exactly what I think about this passage. But I think that God is amazing in that He turned what was a gentle rebuke at Sarah’s (and probably Abraham’s as well) disbelief into an occasion for joy for the present time and for years to come.

Isn’t that just like our God?

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