Weekly Magazine | Holy Fun

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Dear Friends,

When was the last time you really laughed?

Not just a chuckle, but the kind of laugh that bubbles up from somewhere deep—unguarded, unplanned, maybe even a little loud. The kind that catches you by surprise and leaves you lighter than before.

Somewhere along the way, many of us started treating fun like it’s a luxury—or even a distraction from “real” faith. But Scripture tells us that joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), laughter is good medicine (Prov. 17:22), and rest was God’s idea from the very beginning.

This week’s issue is a celebration of holy fun—the kind of joy that refreshes your soul, renews your perspective, and maybe even makes you a little more childlike in the best way. Whether you’re navigating a desert season, stuck in a serious mindset, or simply overdue for some lightheartedness, we hope this issue gives you full permission to smile, to play, and to remember that God delights in your joy.

So go ahead—embrace the lighter side of faith. You just might find it leads you closer to Him.

Encouraging You in God’s Truth,

🌿 Joy in the Desert | Jane Rubietta
Even in dry and discouraging seasons, God offers us glimpses of His joy. Through a whale-watching adventure and moments of unexpected laughter, Jane invites us to discover the sacred power of fun—even in the wilderness.

🌿 The Joy of Holy Fun | Shelly Esser
Is it really spiritual to laugh? Absolutely. From penguins to Sabbath rest, God built joy and celebration into creation—and into us. This piece explores how reclaiming fun as a holy gift helps us live healthier, fuller, faith-filled lives.

🌿 Planning Joy on Purpose | Kathy Jingling & Pam Morton
If joy feels out of reach in your busy life, maybe it’s time to pencil it in. Through hilarious stories, spontaneous adventures, and family traditions, Kathy and Pam remind us that fun isn’t frivolous—it’s fuel for a joyful life.

📖 For Your Heart
📜 Bible Verse of the Week
🙏 Prayer of the Week

A Jesus Shaped Life

Joy in the Desert

Discovering God’s Playfulness When Life Feels Dry.

By: Jane Rubietta

On a rare trip to a warehouse store, I heard laughter ring from one of the aisles. As I rounded the corner, a man in a red jacket stood with a mother and her son, both entranced.

“Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up?” he asked. His audience shook their heads, grinning. “It was two tired.” He rolled out one joke after another in a seemingly endless repertoire of good will. A fixture at the store, the employee dispenses smiles and leaves joy in his wake.

Water-Play in the Wilderness

It is good to have role models for fun especially when we are in “the desert”─consider the Israelites. Imagine their thirst when they were begging God to provide drink in the desert. They were hot, parched, dirty, cranky, and scared. The Lord answered when Moses struck a rock and water gushed out (Exo. 17:1-7). So, like kindergartners, the Israelites stood in an orderly line, single file, and waited their five-second turn at the drinking fountain. I doubt it. I envision our wilderness companions laughing uproariously, jumping in and out of the water, filling up their water bottles and emptying them over their friends’ heads (the origin of hydrotherapy). Full, water-enhanced joy!

Even in the dry, dusty, often-discouraging desert of transitions, we have to choose to find fun, somehow, somewhere.

A Whale of a Day

A year into our ministry transition, stress lined my face and filched pounds from my body. I was speaking in New Hampshire on Massachusetts’ Atlantic coast. Each morning I awakened and scrambled down to the dining room, ready for coffee and God, and desperately eager to see the sun rise over the crashing waves and rocks just outside the window.

What one thing would I love to do while there? Just one thing?

I wanted to go whale watching.

The only problem was my terror. The ocean is deep. And whales are big. They could tip the boat over! My husband helpfully recommended whale repellant.

The morning of my voyage, I awoke at 3:00 a.m. to violent weather outside and heaved a sigh of relief because obviously we couldn’t go out in a tempest. By 5:00 a.m. the rain slowed to a fine mist. By 7:00 a.m. a flamboyant sun burned off all remains of inclement weather.

With a mixture of fear and expectancy, I headed off to the Yankee Fleet for my fulfillment, of an oasis in the desert.

On the boat, the cool ocean breeze blew over me, the day full of just-washed freshness. I watched the waters alertly jerking my life jacket taut. But within, the chant, “God is doing something, God is doing something,” heightened my anticipation and sliced through my fears cleanly. We chased around for a time, searching. Finally, our oceanographer called over the loudspeaker, “Whale on port” (whichever side that is). We rushed to look. “Whale on starboard ... “and we heaved to the other side. Soon whales surrounded us. At one point, five whales surfaced, hanging around our boat. Our boat!

These whales─our whales!─ slapped their tails and rolled sideways and hung upside down in the water. They turned over and over. “Whales don’t perform for humans out here,” the naturalist said. “They are doing this all on their own.” The feeling that God was orchestrating this for us─for me─grew.

In the middle of my desert, the trip on the Yankee Fleet was a breathtaking display of God's creative glee. He showed Himself, and His heart for me. Later that week, a woman asked, “When have you felt God’s love most strongly?”

"On Tuesday,” I answered. “When I went on a whale watching trip.”

Back to Reality

But honestly, how often do we get to glimpse the ocean in our desert sojourn? We keep our head down and plod forward. Laughter is a stranger. Transitions are somber work, fun is frivolous, and we need to just get through.

Right?

Wrong. The dust of the desert is the perfect place to learn to laugh and play again. This is why our children’s hospital offers hospital bingo, play areas, and computer rooms for kids and teens, with massages for parents. Just into our current ongoing transition of trust, my daughter and I saw Robin Williams in Patch Adams. The movie, and the true story on which it is based, exemplifies laughter and joy as healing elements in lives filled with pain and illness.

Patch spouts to a supervisor, who is unimpressed with Patch’s laughter-inducing treatment of patients, “Laughter increases the secretion of endorphins which in turn increases oxygenation of the blood, relaxes the arteries, speeds up the heart, decreases blood pressure, which has a positive effect on all cardiovascular and respiratory ailments as well as over-all increasing the immune system response.”

The American Journal of Medicine concurs with King Solomon: “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Prov. 17:22).

Fun also breaks down social barriers and eases our grief. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, comedians closed their mouths in mourning. Humor felt irreverent. Then, after several months, it became apparent that what our grieving country needed in the wilderness was laughter. The funny people started laughing again, plucking us out of the vacuum of tragedy and into a place of healing.

Sober Christians

Perhaps there is a serious misunderstanding of Christianity, both inside and outside its ranks. How many times have opponents said, “Christians don’t have any fun?” Hilarity is rare unless you’re part of a crazy youth group. After that, grow up fast and get serious. Our buddy Harvey calls it “hanging crepe”: that mysterious funereal darkness that Christians spread, the gloom and doom of life, the concerned “sharing.” After all, sin and saving souls are serious business.

One friend, in charge of children’s ministry at her very somber church, remembers bringing the puppet show up to the “Big People’s Church” one Sunday. The one-liners were enormously funny, but they fell in the church like lead inside a tomb. The head pastor sat totally unresponsive. The congregation followed the lead. But the new associate didn’t know the rules, didn’t know it wasn’t OK to laugh in church and hooted throughout the entire performance.

As his howling, solo laugh echoed inside the cavernous sanctuary, my friend and her husband looked at each other, the realization dawning gradually: we have forgotten what it means to laugh. “The entire time we attended that church, we never once heard laughter except for that Sunday,” she said. “Our motto was the hymn, ‘We’ll Work ‘Til Jesus Comes.’”

I believe God loves our laughter. I can’t wait to get to heaven and hear His laugh. Surely He laughs when giraffes stick out their tongues, when kittens play, and children learn to talk. Surely He chuckles when daddies take off the baby’s diaper and get sprayed. Surely He laughs ... Surely we can laugh too, then.

Serious Business

Near the end of a long flight, the attendant announced that we would watch a comedy show. I was working and didn’t want to waste a minute of time. Others’ laughter caught my attention. First quiet chuckles, then out loud guffaws. I stuck the headset over my ears and soon my sides ached and my eyes leaked from laughing.

A permission process must occur within ourselves to take time in the wilderness for fun. Today our high schoolers finished their finals and have nothing due or to do for four entire days. They were ecstatic, planning adventures. My husband and I looked at one another, asking, “What must that feel like? If we don’t work, we’re in trouble. Imagine four days with no expectations.” Playtime makes no sense for the self-employed living on a shoestring. Unless they want to stay alive.

Unless, when we honor God’s idea of rest, of Sabbath, of enjoyment, He steps up to the plate and keeps the work-ball in the air. Fun in the wilderness is, after all, a matter of perspective: God is greater than all our turmoil, God is the only One who knows and holds our future, so we can lighten our grip after all. And enjoy the moment at hand.

A Tool for Pain

Erma Bombeck came along as one of the first, and best, humor writers, and America watched closely as she handled the news of her breast cancer, then kidney failure and transplant. Her trademark humor allowed her to interpret illness─her own and others’ ─for the world at large, and it carried her through to the very end of her life, effectively helping both her and her readers move through the valley of the shadow of death.

Relaxing in the Wilderness

When Jesus returned from His wilderness sojourn, He came back to a wedding, the ultimate ceremony that mocks the discouragement and darkness of transition. Maybe you don’t have a wedding to celebrate, but there are many varieties of fun in the desert sun: something silly, like building a fort with your kids! Or a bubble bath, or your favorite carryout food, or chasing lightning bugs, or renting a paddle boat at a nearby lake, or going to the amusement park or skating rink...simple, clean, plain old fun can transform the journey. And our heart.

If we notice. If we let the mysterious process do its work.

It’s puzzling, but when I speak, people seem to laugh. “Your home must be so much fun,” an audience member once said. My heart quelled because my home wasn’t exactly a barrel of monkeys. I just wasn’t funny at home. My task-oriented approach to life and family dried up any mirth faster than dew evaporates in the desert heat. Elizabeth Potter wrote in Elle, “It isn’t life that weighs us down – it’s the way we carry it.”

My lack of laughter seemed in proportion to my lack of faith. But the wilderness is teaching me─that God is truly the Lord of the wasteland. As I trust Him more, my joy ratio rises. Though we are not through the desert yet, laughter comes more easily, fun more spontaneously.

And what a great option: choosing to find fun is one of God’s wackiest tools and a wonderful juxtaposition to the wilderness. If we must live in the desert for a while, let’s grab a shovel and build sand castles.

Jane Rubietta is a dynamic Christian women's speaker and author of many books. She attended seminary at Trinity Divinity School in Deerfield, IL., and is the assistant coordinator and faculty member of Write-To-Publish Writer's Conference, where she finds enormous joy in helping others follow their God-given dreams. She belongs to Advanced Writers and Speakers' Association (AWSA) and SpeakUp! Speaker Services. You can contact her at janerubietta.com.

The Joy of Holy Fun

Why God Loves to See Us Laugh.

By: Shelly Esser

Fun isn’t frivolous—it’s foundational. From silly conference mishaps to scriptural truth, this piece offers a joyful reminder that God delights in our laughter and invites us to see fun as sacred. Whether you’ve forgotten how to enjoy life or simply need a permission slip to rest, you’ll find encouragement here to embrace holy play as a form of worship.

➡️ How might your faith grow deeper if you allowed more joy and lightheartedness into your life?

Planning Joy on Purpose

Everyday Adventures with Family, Friends, and Faith.

By: Kathy Jingling & Pam Morton

From British tea parties to surprise road trips, this joy-filled piece reminds us that laughter doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant—it just has to be intentional. With practical wisdom and hilarious stories, Kathy and Pam show how planning for fun can refresh relationships, build connection, and help us live more fully in the joy of the Lord.

➡️ What’s one small way you can plan joy into your week—just for the fun of it?

When life gets busy, heavy, or uncertain, fun is often the first thing to go. But joy isn’t optional in the Christian life—it’s part of our calling.

Jesus invites us into fullness, not just survival. And sometimes, that fullness looks like unplanned laughter, a silly moment with your kids, or an afternoon spent doing something “unproductive” that restores your soul.

Fun doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the hard stuff. It means we’re living like people who know how the story ends—with joy, celebration, and eternal delight in the presence of our God.

This week, give yourself permission to laugh, play, and enjoy being alive in Christ.

📜 Bible Verse of the Week:

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
—Proverbs 17:22

Prayer of the Week

Lord, thank You for being the God who created joy, laughter, and delight. Forgive me for the times I’ve taken life too seriously and forgotten that You are a God who celebrates. Help me embrace fun not as a distraction—but as a reflection of Your goodness. Teach me to rest, to laugh, and to love more freely. Let my joy be rooted in You, and let it overflow into the lives of those around me. Amen.

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