A joke to laugh at
Little Johny and his family were eating Sunday lunch with Grandma. When everybody was seated at the table Grandma started dishing up.
When Johny got his plate, he started eating immediately.
“Johny, please!” said his mother. “Please wait until we’ve said grace.”
“I don’t have to,” he said immediately.
“But you must!” said his mother. “At home we always say grace before we eat.”
“That’s what we do at our house,” Johny explained. “But this is Grandma’s house and she knows how to cook.”
I really enjoy a joke. I’m not that good at telling them myself, because I either forget the punch line or start off with the punch line and then the joke is not funny anymore. These days it’s much easier to tell a joke, because you can simply WhatsApp or e-mail one of Tolla and his cronies’ jokes to others.
Some time ago I sent a sound bite of one of the guys from the old Spies en Plessis series to a bunch of my friends. The next day one of them phoned me and said he couldn’t open it on his phone. He asked me to resend it, concluding with the remark: “If it is clean.” And that “if it is clean” stuck and I went to listen to the joke sound bite again, wondering how clean it actually was. I’m still waiting to give myself an answer and, no, I did not send it to my friend again.
Let’s consider this verse: 29 Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
Dirty jokes tend to end up inside you making you feel dirty. It leaves pictures in your head that do not really fit in with God’s picture of us. That is why we have to consciously cut those jokes out. Put a guard in place so that such obscenities do not impose themselves on you in clever ways. If your friends start talking that way, walk away. They may comment about you being high and mighty, but know that they actually respect you. They will tell less and less dirty jokes when you are around. What a great way to visibly live your testimony.
God created us. He gave us humour and we should use it. Let’s take it back from those who mess about with it. Let’s keep it clean and enjoy it. Good clean humour releases a whole lot of relaxed energy.
Scripture:
Reflection
How clean are your jokes?
What do you do when some else’s joke is on the wrong side of dirty?
Prayer
Lord, it’s not always easy not to laugh at dirty jokes. Sometimes I can hardly distinguish what is clean and what is not. Please help us keep to the humour You gave us clean. Amen
