Altar Call - Opelika-Auburn News
Walter Albritton
January 6, 2018
Laughter is good medicine for the family
Nothing improves damaged relationships like a
good dose of forgiveness. And forgiveness can “happen” informally. It can occur
when people laugh together during Christmas holidays. Maybe that’s why our
family members seem to laugh together more at Christmas than at any time of the
year.
Laughter is good medicine. It can take the sting
out of hurt feelings. It can help us toss aside lingering resentments and move
on. Our family has had its share of brokenness but over the years we have
learned it is not healthy to “stay mad forever” about the way someone slighted.
Our “wounds” only get worse the longer we drag them into the future.
People can easily sense how you feel about them.
So we can facilitate reconciliation by “loosening up” and becoming more affable.
To respond to someone with warmth and gentleness can signal your willingness to
bury the hatchet. Quiet healing can occur when one offers another forgiveness
wrapped in kindness. It is not always necessary for the past event to be
rehearsed and hashed over again.
Reconciliation may elude those who insist on a
showdown at the O.K. Corral. If the offended one will let bygones be bygones
only if the offender openly admits having been wrong, healing may a long time
coming. That stubborn attitude fails to acknowledge that both parties were at
fault. Seldom is it the case that one party is totally responsible for a
ruptured relationship.
Grandparents
see things differently from the young. Young people think life will never end;
seniors realize that time is running out. Since “wisdom comes with age,”
seniors usually realize the futility of being at odds with family members and
friends. Life is short and time is wasted by withholding affection until
someone else wises up. In the long run nothing is gained by insisting that
someone else was offensive and needs to say “I was wrong.”
Truth
is, we are all “wrong” at times. None of us is an angel. We all say things we
should not have said. Our struggles with life’s issues can deplete our supply
of kindness and patience. So if you are prone to think you are always right,
you need to come down off your high horse and admit you are a flawed human
being like the rest of us. But don’t bawl and howl about it. Laugh about it!
Laugh with others about it! Laughing together about our common frailty can help
us accept and affirm one another. The bottom line is that we need each other
and laughing together can help us come together in loving acceptance.
I am
not sure why we are more understanding and forgiving at Christmastime than at
any other time. Perhaps it is because of the birth of a child in Bethlehem.
When God came down at Christmas as a little baby, he was saying to all of us:
“Even though you are sinners, one and all, I love you anyway and I am sending
my son to show you how much I love you.”
Accepting
the love of that baby, that Son, that Savior, changes us. He makes us able to
offer one another “anyhow love” without any strings. I witness that happening
every Christmas while a baby is spitting up on mama’s shoulder and the older
children are running through the house like Indians on the warpath. Despite all
this the adults are telling stories and laughing together. While the children
are being children, grownups are saying “I love you anyway” without speaking
the words. Laughing together is the track on which that train runs!
The preacher in me wants to get spiritual and
invite everyone to sing, “Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords
of love that cannot be broken.” But I hear the Lord whispering to me, “Relax
preacher; laughter is good medicine and I am using it to bless your family. Laughing
together will help them affirm their humanity and strengthen the ties that bind
them together – to you and to me.”
All I can manage to say, as tears flood my eyes,
is “Thank you Lord.” + + +