I have a friend who breaks out laughing whenever I call him. That’s right—before I can say anything he’s laughing. He sees my name on his ID screen and laughs at the thought of me; so he’s still laughing when he picks up the phone.
Now it’s true that he’s part comedian and we’ve always had fun together, but I don’t know of anyone else who laughs at the mere thought of me. Really. I’m not that funny of a person, in fact, I have more of a tendency to be depressed than to be happy, but Chuck thinks I’m funny and that’s fine by me. I have been known to call him just to hear him laugh.

We need to laugh more. The enjoyment of the current moment is so often overshadowed by pressures from without and within. We postpone laughter because we don’t think we have earned the right to be happy. Or we are postponing laughter because we are waiting to turn a corner in our circumstances. Well we haven’t earned it and that’s one of the reasons why we can be so happy. It’s not attached to us or our circumstances. We are happy for other reasons. So go ahead and laugh; it’s good medicine.

It was one of my mother’s favorite verses. Pardon the King’s English but that’s the way I was used to hearing it, and I heard it often. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones” (Proverbs 17:22).