We Can All Use a Little More Mirth, Can't We?
Traversing the Christian blogosphere over the last few months, I've been struck by something that just came to the fore of my mind this evening. I've seen and read so much of people struggling to follow the Lord Jesus Christ in their many-varied and unique ways, but I tend to see one thing lacking. It was something that G.K. Chesterton picked up on in the closing paragraph of Orthodoxy, one of the great pieces of Christian writing of all time:
"And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."
I've never had to read the last line of a book and then go to a dictionary to understand what it said, except with Orthodoxy. Mirth? Yes, mirth. Look it up.
And speaking of mirth, check out this article from The Wittenburg Door. Let he who has mirth laugh.
Grace, Peace and Mirth,
Raffi
"And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."
I've never had to read the last line of a book and then go to a dictionary to understand what it said, except with Orthodoxy. Mirth? Yes, mirth. Look it up.
And speaking of mirth, check out this article from The Wittenburg Door. Let he who has mirth laugh.
Grace, Peace and Mirth,
Raffi
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