The Best Medicine?

My 17 year old son and I found ourselves on our own on a bank holiday Monday evening and so we decided to watch a film. We ended up choosing Johnny English. This is exactly the kind of film I would choose not to watch! But we found ourselves giggling all the way through it and belly laughing at the end! It is an utterly ridiculous and very funny film.

What makes you laugh? It is an oft quoted statistic that whilst children laugh 300 times a day adults only laugh 15 – 20 times. And yet as the saying goes ‘laughter is the best medicine’. Being with someone you find funny; allowing yourself to find incidents amusing; looking for the funny side of things. It lifts us up doesn’t it? It allows us to be on a lighter plane – to embrace an easier way of living.

In Psalm 9 verse 2 the psalmist writes:

I will be glad and exult in you;

  I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

The author seems to recognise the importance of being glad and allowing good things to soak into our lives. But more than that the psalmist recognises that sometimes it is a choice. A choice to be glad, a choice to praise, a choice to laugh. My prayer is that we might make that choice – that we might choose to be glad, choose to laugh and find our hearts lifted as a result.