LIVERMORE — September 1, 2024 Service. The congregation was welcomed by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service. The Call to Worship, Invocation/Lord’s Prayer were recited. The hymns that were sung were “Standing on the Promises”, “Freely, Freely”, and “I His Time”. The service ended with communion. Linda Lyman is the organist, Janet Diaz is the pianist, and Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.

The sermon, titled “God and Humor” and scriptures from Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: …a time to weep and a time to laugh…”. We look around and see this world and even our own lives and our hearts are heavy with sadness. How can we find joy and laughter in this world when it seems dismal? Throughout the Bible we see where it says that even God laughed, and His sense of humor is shown. Remember Abraham and Sarah? Abraham was 100 years old, and Sarah was 90 years old and they had a baby boy. They named him Issac, which means laughter. When God told Noah to build an ark and told him it needed to be big enough for two of each animal. Noah must have scratched his head, since there hadn’t been any rain up until the completion of the ark. And what about David and Goliath? Here you have a small boy who took out a giant of a man with a stone. These a just a few examples of God’s sense of humor. Of course, there is the one about how we make plans for our lives without consulting God and God is saying “I don’t think so”. Proverbs 16 shows us how our plans and God’s response is for us. This is why we hear “Man plans, and God laughs” at us. We don’t consult Him in our plans and God sits back and waits for it to fall apart without Him in our plans.

God wants us to realize that all good and perfect gifts are from above, and laughter is one of them. Laughter is a gift from God and a reminder that we are meant to be witnesses of God’s joy in this world, not merely echo chambers of misery, division, and gloom. God wants us to be happy and joyous. I put joy and laughter together because God does. Laughter is a part of a joyous time. God didn’t have celebrations, neither did Jesus, without joy and laughter. We need to use laughter as a shock absorber. If we want less stress in our lives, we need to learn to laugh at our circumstances, we need to find the fun in our frustrations.

How do we put laughter in our lives? God says to look for laughter. See the joy in all circumstances. Even in our darkest days, we can find a glimmer of joy. God tells us to be cheerful and laugh when you can. We need to not take life so seriously. If you are a Christian, we know how this world ends, why are we so gloomy? We should always be rejoicing.

Sometimes, in our lives, all we can do is laugh. It can be relaxing and healing and a buffer for all the stresses that this world will throw at us. Start by looking at the bright side of things, don’t dwell on the bad times. If you want others to follow you to Jesus, show them Jesus through your life of laughter, joyfulness, singing and shouting of praise for Jesus. If we are showing others that we are critical and grumpy all the time, we can’t show them Jesus in us. We need to live by our outcome of our life will determine the outcome of our lives! Find the laughter and joy God has given us to live with

Announcements: we will be collecting canned tuna for the Food Pantry in September. Bible Study – Tuesday at 1 p.m.