Christianity can appear fairly grim, sombre and serious at times.
Have you ever seen people’s faces while they are singing? If you get the chance, watch a video on YouTube or wherever of people singing and watch it on mute and see the facial gestures. They can be singing about a love so pure and so true, and their face looks more like they’re eating a prune.
Some people translate earnest and devoted to God to having a miserable outlook. Sober attitude equals the long face.
Now I’m not into joviality for its own sake, and what some people find funny can be trivial nonsense designed to deflect people from anything serious to something that is inane and rather boorish.
Discipleship involves suffering and that isn’t something that would naturally get us dancing on the streets. (Although Jesus suggests we should rejoice, but what does He know, He is only the Son of Man who displays what it is to count it all joy when various trials come upon you knowing the testing of your faith …)
There are serious issues going on and they are not laughing matters or issues that we can glibly sing over.
But seriously, we don’t have to be all serious.
Imagine our children looking at these ‘expressions of faith’. Imagine them taking that on board as the way to be when Jesus comes into your life. That is the joy of the Lord?
Apparently when Jesus was on the earth children would flock to the brother clamouring for his attention, and children, being children, would not have conducted themselves in a sombre and serious manner. They would not have screwed up their faces at the sight of the Messiah and looked like they were passing wind in the most painful way in engaging with Him. Someone so approachable to children elicits the playful, joyful, gleeful side of life.
That does not just apply to children. And it is not about being childish.
It is not about ‘lightening up’ at all – it is about lighting up with the Light of Life and seeing life in that perspective.
Now I write as someone who can get all serious and overcome with the depth of it all and everything has to be done with the tones of James Earl Jones reading Matthew Chapter 8 and 9 (obviously in the King James Version which is the version God loves).
Having three delightful daughters, though, highlights just how my relationship with the Father should be. Sometimes when the sun shines on a field, it is like a smile of creation, and the way the animals can gallop and lolop about the place suggests life isn’t all about the long face.
Just a suggestion.
Carry on.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 