Friday, August 7, 2009

Did Jesus laugh?

Listening to a sermon yesterday, I heard the question posed, Did Jesus laugh? An interesting thought. The Pastor, Ravi Zacharias, quoted Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and the answer Chesterton offers regarding the deep Joy of the almighty...What struck me, is Chesterton's description of Jesus. What a man, and yet, so much more than a man!

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the
gigantic secret of the Christian. 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.

1 comment:

yolanda said...

thanks for sharing this amelia!