Recently, I was at an outside sporting event, sitting among some of the people on a metal bleacher. There was someone sitting a few feet from me that was doing a lot of laughing. The problem was that their laughter was extremely loud with kind of a screechy, high-pitched tone to it. The sound was kind of dominating the atmosphere. It was obvious that the off button on her laughing box was broken because everything was hilarious to her. On the inside, I began to complain for the sound was extremely irritating, and I was thinking that someone familiar with this person should love her enough to tell her to stop doing that. At that moment, I began to talk to the Lord about it asking Him to please make it stop because I could not even concentrate on the sporting event that I came to enjoy. Just as I began to talk to the Lord about it, I heard His voice so clearly interrupt me and say, “I just love the sound of human laughter.” I immediately knew in my mind and my emotions that Jesus was saying this to me in the context of the tragedy and sadness that surrounds fallen humanity. In light of the darkness of the fall of mankind, the sound of human laughter causes Jesus to cup His ear with delight in His heart.
When Jesus spoke that in me (to me), it was a fresh opportunity for repentance and breakthrough in my life. Jesus never mocks people. He doesn’t complain, and He doesn’t get irritated. At the moment I surrendered to His way of thinking and living, I was once again participating in His life, but in a new, larger way. The laughter didn’t change, but I did, and it was now the most wonderful sound I had ever heard. Having repented, I was once again living like the new creation in Christ that I am, controlled by a divine love that frees me from recognizing people according to the flesh. You don’t have to go to a conference or spend days fasting to get a breakthrough. I got a breakthrough that brought me into a larger experience of this large room called “in Christ” while sitting on a metal bleacher at a youth sporting. Every day is a grand adventure, as C. S. Lewis said, “Further up and further in.”