(Science and nature) “…The first analysis of its DNA code has shown that at a genetic level the platypus is indeed a unique amalgam of mammal, reptile and bird. (The Times May 8, 2008 Mark Henderson, Science editor.) Only a God with a sense of mischievousness and playfulness could create something like that. He must chuckle when he sees us scratching our heads for centuries over that one.

We all know saving mankind from himself is serious business, however, my pursuit is to find a few glimpses of God’s sense of fun in the pages of the Bible.

There is a certain humour in that the first man is made of soft red clay and then called by the name “Red”. There is a certain irony that God had Noah build the ark over a period of one hundred years where there was no water and then parked it on top of a mountain range in Turkey (today) where outsiders were forbidden to go. It’s also comical that God confused the languages at the tower of Babel. God must have chuckled when the mortar guy couldn’t understand a word the red-faced bricklayer said and to see the work come to a grinding halt just as he had planned.

Why did God wait until Abram and Sarai were too old to have children to tell them they were going to have a son? What fun for a God who could have made a baby from a rock but decided to make the old folks have a child! Even Sarai had to laugh at the thought and her son born out of that humour was named Isaac (meaning laughter). Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."(Genesis 21: 6 GWT). I would laugh too if I was seventy or eighty-years-old and God informed me I was going to have a baby. I’d think he was teasing big time.

I also see the pleasure and amusement the Creator God must have enjoyed when he wrestled with Jacob all night. To me, that is like a six foot 210 pound father wrestling with his two-year-old son. It certainly couldn’t have been carried out without God’s sense of humour. God took pleasure in Jacob’s tenacity, just like we do with our children.

Then there is the story of Moses…ironic and funny that the baby boy is saved from death, put into a wicker basket onto the Nile only to be rescued by his older sister, Miriam, returned to his mother who nursed him and raised him for the queen and got paid to do so. How funny is that? Sometimes things have a funny way of working out for us too. We sometimes fail to see the humorous side.

And what was God thinking when he talked to Moses out of a burning bush? God could have appeared to him any way at all. Humans do have a fascination with fire…we all rush to a fire to watch it burn. How long did Moses have to stand there looking at the bush to discover it wasn’t burning up? It must have been funny though to see a man talking to a burning bush.

How about the story of the talking donkey? How hilarious is that? To teach the false prophet a lesson God opens that donkey’s mouth and he has a conversation with Balaam. How fitting. “When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff. Then the Lord opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?" Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now." The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?" "No," he said” (Living. Numbers 22:27-30). What a sense of fun God has! God uses both their mouths to his advantage. God uses Balaam’s mouth to bless Israel, instead of curse them like he wanted to. If he didn’t have a sense of fun, he could have killed Baalam outright.

Another event showing God’s sardonic sense of humour and spectacular irony was the evening King Belshazzar gave a great feast for a thousand of his lords and ladies-who brought out the gold and silver cups his father had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem. The pagan king and his guests were laughing, singing and drinking wine from the stolen goblets, toasting their gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron and wood. “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace” (Daniel 5:1-6).Can you imagine seeing fingers scratching out giant letters on plaister in a language you could not understand? The pagan party was over as was his kingship. The theatrics were unnecessary; God could have opened the earth and swallowed them all up, but God wanted to make a point and He did in a unique and unforgettable way.

Another example of God's humour is the instance in which the Israelites were using the Ark of the Covenant like a good-luck charm in taking it to battle, and the Philistines ended up capturing it and placing it in their temple before their idol of Dagon. They came into the temple the next day and found Dagon flat on his face before the ark. They set him back up. The next morning, there he was again, but this time he had his hands and head cut off as a symbol of his powerlessness before the God of the ark (1 Samuel 5:1-5). God putting Dagon in a position of submission to His ark is a comical picture.

How about humour in the New Testament? “And he saw them toiling in rowing: for the wind was contrary unto them; and about the fourth watch…he comes unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. But when they saw him …they supposed it had been a spirit and cried out” (Matthew 14:17-34). And do you think Jesus kept a straight face when he walked on water in a storm no less, for added shock value? I am sure it was followed by sounds of the other eleven apostles laughing and cracking up, as Peter sinks beneath the waves. When Jesus denounced the Pharisees we see his sense of humor in the exaggerated word pictures. We see him picture a cup all clean on the outside, but inside filthy; we see a blind man leading another blind man and both fall into the ditch; we see a camel going through the eye of a needle, and of swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.

So humour is everywhere you just have to be open for it. Look for it. Create it. Spread it around. Set a goal to laugh many times a day. Laughter helps us to get over the hurdles and the rocks like the gurgling, crystal clear rivers of water making its way through the valley. It helps us rise above crises and create opportunities. “He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy” (Job 8:21). And we all need a sense of humour to get through the rough spots…laughter is the ray of sunshine God provided for us like the rainbow after the storm.