Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Luke 6:21
“Like so many others, my husband and I wanted a greater sense of community in our lives. So we joined a book club. We managed to participate regularly for three years, but then we dropped out. We discovered we had begun to dread going.
Instead of an informal, supportive, conversational setting, the group created a pseudo-college English class. Each meeting got worse — I began to feel like my grade was on the line, that if I said something others thought was stupid, I would get a C minus. But this wouldn’t be just a grade. It would actually mean my friends would reject me…
So when my neighbors talked of starting a book club, I said no, no, no. We started a video club instead. On the last Friday night of each month, we gather together and watch a movie on video. Now, sometimes the pressure’s on to select a video that everyone likes, but at least our friendship isn’t on the line.
What we do in the video group that we had quit doing in the book club is laugh. That’s the absolute basic requirement for me in community. If we’re not laughing, I’m not going to do it.
Laughing means people are enjoying each other. It brings a state of felicity, of delight. You feel glad to be alive and you think, this is it! You just don’t need much more than this — a group of friends enjoying each other.
But laughter is really an indicator of something more basic: of people accepting each other. You are valued because you are alive, not because of how much money you earn or how big your house is. When we have that sense of being valued, of being connected, we don’t live lives of consumerism and ambition. We don’t need to prove that we have worth…
We must have a group of people to whom we can express our true selves. We must have a group of caring people who affirm our true selves… There will be different kinds of communities. There is potential for community at work, in your church, in your neighborhood, and in your professional organizations.”
Cecile Andrews in “Building Community” in Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, ed. Michael Schut (New York: Morehouse, 2008) 207-208.
For Jesus, laughter in community is the picture of delight that we can anticipate together with Him in the kingdom. I got a foretaste of it both on my travels to the Philippines over past two weeks and this weekend in the fellowship I enjoyed with the Sarang New Harvest Ministry family on our retreat here in South Korea.
A leading hindrance to generosity is living in the false self. Let me explain. When we live to please others rather than to please God, we spend money on things to attempt to build up our identity and create community. Sadly, such efforts leave us empty rather than enriched, so we miss out on the community we long for and we waste God’s money in the process.
When, instead, we live as our true selves, we find the community we need, we laugh more, and we reflect God’s generosity. More times than I can count, I have been guilty of taking life too seriously. When I do, I don’t laugh enough, I become isolated, and God’s generosity certainly does not flow through me. Perhaps you are learning this too? So what should we do?
I am not saying to go start a book or video club. But I would suggest that you consider the circles in which you find yourself, like work, church, and your neighborhood, and create space in those places for laughter in community. This positions us to dispense generously the one thing everyone on the planet needs: love.