Sacred Silliness by Fellow Hannah Zachman, '17

This blog post original appeared on incourage.me here. 

Growing up as the oldest in a family of four daughters, I prided myself on being the practical one. My younger sisters would spend long car trips giggling about some new imaginary friend or silly game while I’d sit quietly and try to focus on a book. I was the Meg to our Little Women and the Beezus to three Ramonas.

In my mind, there were too many important things to do in life to waste time merely being silly.

And to be honest, I still fall into this mindset more often than not. It feels safer to reduce life to checking off items on my to do list because to have fun for the sake of fun feels all too risky and unproductive. There are problems to be solved and papers to write and laundry to fold and a never-ending list of tasks to do. Who has time to roll on the floor in laughter?

I recently picked up a copy of C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory and added it to my ever growing to do list. This guy understands the intensity of the Gospel, right? The first line of the introduction brought a welcome surprise:

This [weight of glory] does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously.

I think I read over that quote at least a dozen times over a two week period before moving on in the book. Where I was expecting to find heavy, convicting truth, I received an invitation to live the abundant life Jesus promises. There was some weighty glory in there, for sure, but it all pointed back to a man named Jesus who came to live among us and be a real friend.

My sisters and brothers, we serve a God who entered humanity not to lengthen our to do lists, but to breathe life into our dry and tired souls.

We have a Savior who cried, sobbed, loved, groaned, felt compassion, and was full of joy. Bubbling, exploding, contagious joy. That sounds a lot like laughter to me.

Let the truth of this sink in for a minute:

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. {Romans 8:11}

So as I continue to press into this glorious Gospel, I am learning to savor the solemn and the silly moments. Because this news is too joyous not to explode in giggles every so often.