A few weeks ago, I started waking up at ungodly o’clock to write, read and pray before the day began. It seemed like the good puritan thing to do.
Well, as it turns out that Me + 6 Hours of Sleep + 2 Hours of Prayer/Meditation = A Significantly Less Sanctified Me.
I was barking at my kids, impatient with my wife, anxious, and not really like Jesus in any way shape or form except that my beard was still going pretty well. At the same time, I felt spiritually superior than everyone around me.
What went wrong?
Here’s what: I wasn’t pursuing joy. I was pursuing "success". The pursuit of success compels me to wake up before Peter even has the chance to betray Jesus and grind it away on my knees. This will set me apart. This will give me success. This will make me a Great One.
But at some point in the grueling process I thought: “Maybe my kids would see Jesus in me more if I just slept better.”
So I did. I split up my prayer times into morning, noon and evening, and got 8, even 9 solid hours of sleep every night.
The result? A happier, more joyful me.
My wife and kids thanked me for it.
And that got me thinking about Mirth. A general outlook on life that includes having fun, smiling at people and things, and the less than occasional outburst of hearty laughter.
What do you think of when you think of “mirth”? We’ll say it at the same time: One, two three… HOBBITS! Yes. Hobbits are mirthful. So are Narnians. Middle Earth and Narnia were created by two mirthful men, don’t you think?
And some of my favorite preachers are mirthful. Charles Spurgeon had his demons, yet he was undeniably a man of mirth. And so was Martyn Lloyd Jones, in his own kind of Welshman sourpuss frownie-face way. Martin Luther was wicked mirthful. He’s really the one that got me started on this mirth thing, with his counsel to a depressed friend:
“Whenever the devil pesters you with these thoughts…”
What do you think he’s going to say? Go and pray? Read that German Bible I just translated for you you ungrateful peasant? No:
“…at once seek out the company of men, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some other form of merriment.”
Depressed? Prescription: Mirth.
What does this all come to? It comes to this: my favorite writing, my favorite preaching, and the most inspiring lives I know of are, first and foremost, lives that are dripping with a kind of electric humanity. They are mirthful.
I think of a Stephen Colbert quote I recently read:
“Joy is the most infallible sign of the existence of God.”
“Joy is the most infallible sign of the existence of God.”
He’s right, too. You think Mere Christianity convinced you by its logical rigor? False. Many people have wielded the same arguments, to little effect. Why? Because they can borrow the arguments, but they can’t capture the mirth. It wasn’t Lewis’s words that cast the spell on us – it was the twinkle in his eye. Say anything with that twinkle, and I’m your slave. Lewis’s mirth is the apologetic behind the apologetic – the arguments are fallible, but the joy is not.
The point is: beyond everything you and I accomplish in life – beyond the preaching, the writing, the working, the books – beyond it all, the greatest gift we can give to the world is our joy – our mirth.
The greatest gift we can give to the world is our joy – our mirth
Jesus said,
“Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.”
I think I understand that a bit more after this week: if what we do is our means of manufacturing joy, our work loses its mirth. It loses its holy exuberance. It loses its substance.
But if we are first of all mirthful men and women, and secondly writers and pastors and staple-gun salesman etc. – then what we do becomes sanctified. It’s the overflow of our joy. That is, in the end, what makes Middle Earth and Narnia and the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit so magnetic is not the characters, not the dialogue, not the metaphors, not the three points, not even the world-building: it’s the mirth.
So whatever else you do this week – do this one thing: be mirthful. Your spouse, your children, your church, your neighborhood and your world will be the better for it. And so will you.
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Nick has worked in youth ministry for 5 years, studied communication and creative writing at Olivet Nazarene and Oxford University, and has travelled and spoken to youth internationally at retreats, graduations, and Christian schools. He is the author and proprietor of the blog, Scribblepreach.com.
