Cornerstone No. 191, page 8
A Divine Gift
Life
& Work
One Monday as I was packing my golf clubs into the car,
a lady member of my Dornoch congregation said, as she
passed: “I am glad to see you are going away to enjoy
yourself on the golf-course, for you ministers cannot
have much enjoyment.”
Had she seen the way I played that morning, the drives I mishit, the putts I
missed, she might well have concluded I knew no joy in life whatsoever. How
wrong she would have been. Though the ministry has its serious side, it
fortunately also has its lighter side, plenty of sunshine, joy and humour, plenty
of opportunity to exercise our ‘chuckle muscles’.
David Kossoff once wrote a piece about humour in the form of a prayer.
I would agree with Kossoff. Humour is a divine gift.
Humour and laughter, like faith, can help us transcend life’s heartbreaks and
jumbled contradictions. Adversity being present in the world, I wonder if God
sought to balance things out by giving us a sense of humour, the ability to
perceive and appreciate the incongruous in life. I sometimes think of laughter
as God’s hand on the shoulder of a troubled world. I honestly don’t think I could
have survived in the ministry for forty years if I had not had a sense of humour,
the ability to laugh at my own foibles and pretensions, and more quietly at other
people’s foibles and pretensions.
As an old preacher once said, “If you could just sit on the wall and see yourself
pass by, you would die laughing at the sight.”
I am sorry that sense of humour and common sense were not listed with the
other five senses, for both these overlooked senses provide perspective.
Many years ago I was asked to give the annual lecture in honour of Professor
William Barclay. Recalling his lively sense of humour, I decided to entitle the
lecture “The Laugh Shall be First”. As I prepared, I could almost feel John Calvin
breathing down my neck saying: “You ought to use this special occasion to
speak about more weighty matters than laughter and humour.” But I have no