Just ran across this interesting quote from Chuck Swindoll:
"My vocation is among the most serious of all professions. As a minister of the gospel and as the senior pastor of a church, the concerns I deal with are eternal in dimension. A week doesn't pass without my hearing of or dealing with life in the raw. Marriages are breaking, homes are splitting, people are hurting, jobs are dissolving, addictions of every description are rampant. Needs are enormous, endless, and heartrending.
The most natural thing for me to do would be to allow all of that to rob me of my joy and to change me from a person who has always found humor in life - as well as laughed loudly and often - into a stoic, frowning clergyman. No thanks.
Matter of fact, that was my number-one fear many years ago. Thinking that I must look somber and be ultraserious twenty-four hours a day resulted in my resisting a call into the ministry for several years. Most of the men of the cloth I had seen looked like they held down a night job at the local mortuary. I distinctly remember wrestling with the Lord over all this before He pinned me to the mat and whispered a promise in my ear that forced me to surrender. 'You can faithfully serve Me, but you can still be yourself. Being My servant doesn't require you to stop laughing.' That did it. That one statement won me over. I finally decided I could be one of God's spokesmen and still enjoy life." -- "Laugh Again", pg 13
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