29. What a Joke

Tell Me the Story

Perhaps you’ve heard before that God has a sense of humor. Well, that is true but not in the way you might think. Often, if we say God has a sense of humor it is so that we can relate with God. We want him to be the father we didn’t have, the friend we need, the brother who will watch out for us, and if he has a good sense of humor, that makes him all the more friendly. This is not scriptural. God has a sense of humor but he laughs at us, not with us. If we can laugh at ourselves, then good! Perhaps then, we can stray from the path of self-righteousness, but that does not mean that God and we are on the same page. We all think we have things figured out, we study scripture and think we understand, we live life and think we understand how to navigate it, but we will always be tested when we least expect it and like a child bracing itself confidently against a monster in a children's novel, we look foolish to God, and he laughs at us. What’s worst of all is that before we even knew what we were doing, we laughed at God. This is why he laughs at us; because we are but children who think they know what they are saying, but as scripture continues to show us through the meshalim, the stories, every word that comes out of our mouth is wrong and every word condemns us. Intro and outro music Copyright © Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, used by permission. All rights reserved.