Sermon Illustrations

LAUGHTER

While the average child laughs 150 times a day, say researchers at the University of Michigan, the average adult laughs only 15 times.

Youth Worker Update, Signs of the Times, August, 1993, p. 6.

Average number of laughs a person has in a day: 17

Charis Conn, Ed., What Counts: The Complete Harper's Index.

In The Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, Norman Cousins tells of being hospitalized with a rare, crippling disease. When he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, Cousins reasoned the reverse was true. So he borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment, consisting of Marx Brothers films and old "Candid Camera" reruns. It didn't take long for him to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain-free sleep. Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed. After the account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins received more than 3000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world. 

Today in the Word, December 18, 1991. 

Laughter improves any meal--experts even say it aids digestion. Ask everyone in your family to contribute five jokes or riddles on slips of paper. Keep them in a jar on the table and during dinner take turns drawing them out and reading them. 

Paul Lewis.

Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused. 

Habib Bourguiba.