The Gift of Laughter

HAVE YOU EVER thought of the tremendous significance of the fact that this is a world in which men can laugh? This world of frustration, of pain, of multiplied miseries; this world of threats? An all-compelling reason for belief in God would be this: that the world rings with laughter. On a tiny speck of dust called Earth, there lives the creature of a flickering moment, this oddity, this little thing--this less than nothing--known as man. He knows the shortness of the moment, how brief the day is and how long the night. Yet he laughs. Whatever made man. . .made laughter too. Whatever is the ultimate nature of reality, laughter came out of it, laughter laughs back at it, laughs with it, defies whatever stands against it. It can do so because--no matter what the contradictions, the want of understanding, the fears and doubts--somewhere at the heart of things, confidence dwells. . .confidence that is God. Laughter is the challenge of the living soul to whatever is not conquered, the promise of the spirit's supremacy, courage of the world's new morning, vanquishing forever the receding dark.