October 7 – Happy face

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” - Provers 17:22

This is what the AV says, 'like a merry heart', but check the margin and you'll find it says ' a merry heart does good to a medicine'. Moffat translation says ' a glad heart helps and heals', while the ARSV goes even further by saying 'a cheerful heart is a good medicine'. It's a medical fact that those who laugh most do live longer. Many a GP wishes they could write on their prescriptions, 'to be taken three times a day with a merry heart'. A healthy laugh expands the lungs and is good for everyone.

“A happy man” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “is a better thing than finding a five pound note” - and almost as hard to come across!. Yet, some of the happiest people I have met over the years have been in hospital's and hospice's. Despite their personal position they have a ready smile, and are the first to offer words of comfort and consolation to visitors, who are otherwise well and healthy, but have had a rough day at work. Talk about taking grapes to the patient, then sitting on the bed and eating them!

When one of my nephew's was in such a position, he (and the nurses) eagerly looked forward to receiving my homemade cards containing christian jokes – jokes I knew would bring laughter, not only to his room, but to the beds of every patient on the main ward. The gospel message was spread, by sharing laughter.

William Barclay writes, “There are so many people whose faces are liable to crack, if they allow themselves to smile. And there are still many congregations who are a little shocked, if they are compelled to smile. Somehow they cannot connect laughter and the worship of God.”

I find this difficult to understand because laughter has existed since before the world began. The book of Job tells us that at the foundation of the world 'the morning stars sang together, and all the children of God shouted for joy', Job 38:7. Can you imagine Jesus having a miserable face at the wedding in Cana? Would children have crowded round Him, clambering onto His knee if He had been grump of the year?

Barclay summarises: 'There are people in whose company the sun begins to shine even on a rainy day; and there are people who can put out the sun, even on a midsummer's day.

There is no-one more valuable to meet than the person you leave feeling that life is not such a grim business after all.'

Click on the picture to hear today's music, Nat King Cole singing “Smile”