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Topic: Laughter (10/18/04)
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TITLE: Jesus Joy Laughter Befuddles Evil Doers By Cyndy McNaul-Nelson 10/19/04 |
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I’ve been blessed with a great Christian American Heritage. I’m old enough to have learned at the feet of saints from the early 1900s revival that swept Europe and ended with Azusa Street, birthing our church in rural Iowa through Morris Plotts. I’m old enough to have personally participated in evangelism during the Jesus Movement in the late 1960s to the 1970s.
I have experienced first hand what saints at the beginning of the last century experienced in the supernatural powers of our God. I experienced “after glow” when it meant tarrying at the altar for God to move, instead of eating sandwiches and cookies in the fellowship hall. We went to church looking for God to move after the Sunday night services, when non-believers vacated and only the hungry for God lingered. God showed up!
One of those times cemented my laughter with Jesus Joy. It was well after midnight, when I pulled myself away from the Lord’s presence. I lay under the baby grand piano prostrate before God, as He immersed me into an anointed laughter, where I laughed for two hours. I was sixteen when Jesus and I bonded with laughter, laughter I needed to preserve the emotional past and heal my future.
Three years later, I worked as an emergency room technician. On an icy January night, the interstate highways proved deadly. An older female cancer patient expired, donating her eyes for the transplant program.
State Patrol took organs removed from deceased patients to the University research hospital sixty miles away to ensure safe and intact organs. The deadly night of accidents with severely injured patients taxed the manpower from the State Patrol, Sheriff’s Department, and the local police. None were available to transport the human eyes in a timely fashion before the organs were rendered useless. I and another employee clocked off our night shift at 7:00 am. With the Lord’s protection, we drove ninety miles an hour on icy interstates to deliver the organs, which we did on time for the recipient to receive sight that cold morning.
We unwound after a long shift of dealing with death and gory visions of scalped hit and run victims. It had been a bad night, but we focused on the good that came from our efforts. We laughed at how our escapades earned us a picture of ourselves in the Lion’s magazine, which financially supported the transplant programs.
As I laughed, I heard a gasp from the vestibule of the large hospital. It was a friend with whom we’d grown up together in the church.
“I knew it was you, Cyndy, as soon as I heard that laugh!” She thanked me for the warmth of my familiar laughter, which cheered her, as she took a break from the bedside of her dying father.
But amongst all the death, there is always life and hope. Laughter reminds us of that lively hope. I remembered the children I taught in Sunday School through the many years, since my Jesus Joy experience. When I saw drug dealers and pushers homing in on the children I helped to spiritually raise, I did something about what I saw.
My actions brought intimidation attempts to hush me into silence. One evildoer cornered me in a store, placed his hands on my neck and slowly squeezed. The Jesus Joy bubbled out of my mouth into a laughing smile that challenged his sneering glare. He abruptly let go of my neck, confused by my response.
The next week an unsavory character was sent to accost me. He had escaped a minimum-security prison. The Holy Spirit blocked my fear from the evildoer’s eyes, as his threatening attempts were met with the same Jesus Joy laughter. God’s power confused the evildoers into speechlessness where their rage couldn’t even spark a reaction of assault towards me. The results were not their intended response and issued non-compliance to their threats.
That Jesus Joy anointed laughter is here to stay in my life, while I finish the task God has set before me. God confounded the enemies of the prophets and kings of the Old Testament. God confounded the enemies of Jesus and His disciples. And God continues to confound my enemies through my anointed Jesus Joy laughter, while I protect children from evildoers.