Laughter!

Who doesn't get a smile on your face when you hear laughter! When you see a baby gurgle with laughter, it just brightens your day.....grandmoms and granddads can vouch for that! What causes humans to laugh? The study of laughter is called gelotology and is the psychological and physiological effect on the human body in response to certain stimuli such as hearing a joke, being tickled or something else. Laughter is not the same as humour.

I read that a baby laughs as much as 300 times a day whereas an average adult laughs about twenty times a day! Infants as old as 17 days make vocal sounds of laughter which shows that babies can laugh even before they speak. The older you become, the less you laugh....how sad! As gelotologist Robert Provine puts it: "Laughter is a mechanism everyone has; laughter is part of universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way.”

This video link is worth viewing for its laughter content: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p32OC97aNqc and you will enjoy it.

Laughter has benefits too. It reduces the level of stress hormones; increases the level of health enhancing hormones; increases the number of anti-body producing cells which means a stronger immune system; it provides a physical and emotional release by exercising the diaphragm, shoulder muscles and the heart; it helps us to change our perspective to circumstances around about us; it connects us to people and elevates the mood of others around us and improves the quality of social interaction. Laughter enables you to have fun!

The book of Proverbs in the Bible written thousands of years ago by the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, puts it like this: "A merry heart makes for a cheerful countenance...." (Pr.15:13) and "A merry heart does good like a medicine...." (Pr.10:22). Isaac was Abraham's son born when Abraham was a hundred years old and his wife Sarah was ninety, passed the age of childbearing. When Isaac was born God asked for the child to be called 'Isaac' which means laughter. First, they laughed in unbelief when God told them that they would have a son, and then that laughter turned to joy when the promise of God was fulfilled. Answered prayer brings joy and laughter! A relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ, makes our heart merry and joyous and enables us to live life abundantly!