The Day I Heard God Laugh

Several years ago I was in the middle of one of those seasons when I was having a hard time believing that God was actually hearing (and caring about) my prayers. I had been crying out to him to answer me in the way that I wanted, in the timeframe I had chosen, with the thing that I thought was best. All I could pick up in return was radio silence. Nothing was happening. Nothing was changing. I was discouraged.

But one day something changed. A very clear answer to my prayers began to materialize, in a way that could only be explained by God’s arrangement of it all, and I felt like a ray of light had suddenly burst through my gloomy sense that God wasn’t at work. That’s when I muttered a half-hearted remark to God. And that’s when I heard him laugh. It wasn’t exactly audible, but it was clear as day.

I was getting off the elevator, and in response to the new developments God had brought about, I said under my breath: “God… I think you’re up to something”.

Ha!

God laughed.

“I’m… up to something?

Ha!”

I realized how ridiculously “understatement-of-the-millenium” my remark was about as soon as I was finished saying it. And God, in his Fatherly and gentle kindness, reminded me in that moment that yes, little child, God was indeed “up to something”.

A verse from the Psalms immediately came to mind in that moment:

In Psalm 2:4 we’re told that God “laughs” at the raging of the nations. His total, complete, sovereign power contrasted with the people’s plotting and raging is utterly laughable.

God is “up to something”, and he’s up to something in more ways, and on more levels, and with so many different rationales than we’ll ever know. We’ll doubt this, and we’ll stop believing it, and we’ll become convinced that we’ve been forgotten. But then God will prove yet again that he’s faithful, and we’ll prove yet again that we’re fickle, and because our fickle hearts have been reborn and made new because of Jesus, God our Father will look on us with eyes full of love and laugh. And smile.