Live, Laugh, Love

Last Sunday I visited one of our church members’ home, and as I walked into their living room, I noticed a sign high above the window that stated “Live, Laugh, Love.” As I read these three words I wanted to make sense of what I was reading. First of all most of us do not have writing on our walls or windows, but they did. Then I started to think about these words and to apply theological meaning and understanding to them. I compared the words to the Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Or to the scripture in Deuteronomy 6:4-9,

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

Then the more I looked at them, I started to look at the people who inhabited that particular house. They really practice what the sign said. They have a wonderful life together. They travel. They play and they do so many things that if you get a chance to talk to them in private you will come to the conclusion that in that house nothing is dead. In that house there is not a single dull moment. There is always laughter and joy. It feels like it is Christmas year around. The love I got to feel in that particular home had meaning, purpose and it was adventurous. Something funny happened, I wanted to stay there. I was the last one to leave the gathering. I felt something different, something transforming, something divine.

As I go through some grief (the death of my grandfather), as my work as Regional Hispanic Pastor goes through much change, and as I face sickness myself (I have to have some surgery in February), I am faced with my own humanity. I am confronted with my own doubts and fears. But I found a place which called me to “Live, Laugh, Love”. Through that I was reminded what Christianity is all about; to live, to laugh and to love. As a church that is our motto, that is our gospel, that is our hope. As we begin the Advent season, the waiting, let’s remind
ourselves to live, laugh, love even if we have to write it on our walls and windows. As we celebrate Christmas let’s remind ourselves that God calls us to live abundantly, laugh until everyone can hear us and love until there is no more death, war, sickness and pain in the world. As Leo Rosten wrote;

The purpose of life is not to be happy –
but to matter, to be productive, to be useful,
to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

As we live, laugh and love we change ourselves for the greater good and inspire others to find the best within themselves. Put these three words somewhere in your house — what about on your Christmas tree?

Your pastor
Job J Cobos