Humans are made in God’s image.
God’s image is trinitarian, relational.
One cannot be human alone.
Your challenge this week is to laugh with someone you love.
Sounds easy enough, right?
But if you’re too busy to click the link to read the rest of this post, you realize this challenge might not be as easy as it sounds. So take a minute and slow down long enough to read this, really read it, and think about how you live.
Carl Jung once said, “Busyness is not not just FROM the devil, it IS the devil.” When I look at the pace at which we live these days, I cannot help but conclude he was right. The evil one has taken the Transitive Property of Equality (if A = B, and B= C, then A = C) and twisted it into the Transitive Property of Busyness. If busyness equals productivity, and productivity is good, then busyness is good. And we believe the lie.
Just look at your calendar. That’s all you have to do. Or look at your friends, if they pause long enough for you to see them. Watch your kids – overworked, overstressed, always rushing off to the next good thing. See how they learn from us. Ask yourself, I dare you, ask yourself, when was the last time you stopped just to hang out with people you love? How long ago was that? How often? What percentage of your waking hours do you give to simply enjoying the people you enjoy being with?
Now look , I get it. I really do. Overworking is one of the demons I wrestle with. I appreciate the self-satisfaction that comes from hard work. And I understand there are “seasons” in life, some seasons being busier than others. So I know, from my own experience, how easy it is for the busy seasons to bleed into one another until every season is just as busy as the last. Where is the joy in that? Where is the laughter?
Our problem is too many good things. Who of us willingly gives sacrifices our time and our relationships for bad things, for wasteful things? We may be forced to attend a few pointless meetings, but always in the context of some greater good. We’re too busy for wasteful things. We cut them out of our lives. Because if we’re going to miss a soccer game, or piano recital, or dinner with a friend, it better be worth it.
But is it? Worth it, I mean? Is our busyness worth the sacrifices we make to keep going, to keep running, to keep spinning our wheels?
My favorite seminary professor taught us something I just can’t forget. “You cannot be human alone,” he said one day. We didn’t get it, of course. So he explained.
To be human is to be made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). God exists as Trinity, three-in-one. God exists in a relationship within God’s self. To be made in God’s image is to be made for relationship. Humans are hard-wired for connection. Thus, to be disconnected, to be truly and totally alone, is to be less than human.
Robinson Crusoe on his island, not human until he meets Friday. Tom Hanks on his island, not human until he meets Wilson. Mark Watney on Mars, not human until he establishes contact with NASA. Why do you think solitary confinement is the worst punishment we can come up with?
We are made for relationship. Our busyness doesn’t merely wear us out. Our busyness renders us inhuman by the exact amount that it disrupts our relationships. Laughter is the antidote to this poison. Not the hollow laughter of a business traveler watching reruns of The Office in her hotel room. Nor the sad laughter of a dude watching cat videos. But the honest laughter that flows from the conversation of friends relaxing over coffee. Or the free laughter of lovers who have been married so long they no longer worry what the other one thinks.
Slow down this week. Create space in your schedule for someone else. Go out to dinner. Grab coffee. Catch a ball game. Just hang out. Don’t spend all your time at work. Give your time to the people you care about. Laugh with someone you love.
revjayg 