“Never ever underestimate the importance of having fun.” Randy Pausch
I’m not sure I ever read The Joyful Christian by C. S. Lewis, but I heard about it in a sermon. Bishop Chuck Murphy asked, “Do people who know you’re a Christian equate it with you being joyful?”
People won’t want what we have if they don’t see our joy. I can still turn my purpose – love God, love people – into hard work because it appears more productive. Sometimes I’m just too lazy to plan my fun and I give into scrolling social media instead. Sometimes I forget how important fun is.
When I taught elementary school, I preached that children learned through play. I hated seeing kindergarten students work hard when playing hard was what worked. I admit, though, I’d then go home to my own kids and work hard instead of play with them.
C.S. Lewis said, “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”
If you’re like me, you may struggle to think that God cares about your happiness. I always heard joy is deeper and from Him, whereas happiness is fleeting and folly. That means fun is folly too. I said similar things and probably wrote them in blog posts, things like “He’s more concerned about our spirituality than our happiness.”
It’s true, He cares more about our relationship with Him than about us having fun, but only because He knows we can’t be happy or really have fun without Him. C.S. Lewis said, “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
A friend texted me yesterday, “God is good.” I accidentally texted back a laughing emoji, then corrected it with a heart. Maybe laughing about her text fit just fine.
Prior to grandchildren who demanded to play or get frustrated if not, family gatherings were about discussing our problems to solve them or talking about other people’s problems to feel better about our own. Both fell way short of loving God and loving people.
Anytime we’re all together now, we plan ahead to do one fun thing a day. When our grandkids visited during spring break, we played Par 3 golf, bought tickets for a kid-friendly dinner show, rode our golf cart to the pool and to get fruit bowls, and invited over Nana and Aunt Debbie for dinner. We’re still talking about how much fun we had.
I’m a lot more like Jesus – love God, love people – when I play along. How about you?
In This Together,
Kim
