Friday, October 03, 2008

Laughter Is The Best Medicine

For about the past five weeks, we've been reading through Genesis during morning Bible reading. The sweet girl has been intrigued by the longevity of some of the people we've read about.

Earlier this week we finished Genesis by reading about the deaths of Jacob and then Joseph. Jacob lived "only" to the age of 147, and Joseph only made it to 110! Impressive, but not nearly as long-lived as their ancestors like Noah and Methuselah.

This morning I was making breakfast when the sweet girl popped up with a question.

"Mommy, why didn't Jacob live as long as his ancestors?"

I pondered for a moment, then replied in much the same vein I had yesterday. "Well, we don't really know. But some people think it's because when the earth was very young, there was less pollution and fewer germs, so perhaps people lived longer."

She seemed to find no fault with this, but added wisely: "Or maybe Abraham and Sarah lived longer...because they liked to laugh A LOT!"

Hmm...makes sense to me! Can you imagine the patriarch and matriarch being interviewed for some senior magazine? "And what's the secret to your long life, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham?...Oh, well, we long ago learned that it's important to laugh a lot. Even at ourselves. We even named our kid laughter!"

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