A Merry Heart Really is Like Medicine

I knew I would be in town most all week a couple of weeks ago. I had scheduled two small speaking engagements for a couple of friends.

One was at the request of my former middle school teacher Mrs. Ruth Jones. She had asked me months ago to speak to the ladies at Jamestown Assisted Living in Fort Valley. The other was at the request of Rev. Ned Steele who is a retired Methodist minister. He lives at Baptist Village in Macon and wanted me to speak to the residents there at their monthly group dinner.

I don’t know when I’ve had more fun.

I’m not sure how many ladies were at the Jamestown meeting. I guess there may have been a dozen or so. When I got there the group was singing out of a hymnal. And they were really singing.



It turned out I knew a lot of the ladies. Some I knew because I was friends with their kids when I attended high school in Fort Valley. Some I knew because I had buried their husbands in the past. There were others I just knew.

If laughter is good medicine, then this lively group ought to be feeling pretty good. They laughed and laughed. It was obvious they were having fun and they caused me to have fun.

The more they laughed, the more stories I told. I thought a few of them would hyperventilate.

By the way that happened to me one time in Indiana. I was at a meeting with a group of people who happened to live north of the Mason Dixon. We were sitting around the dinner table after eating and I started telling jokes. I could tell they were not used to my southern humor and they were really laughing. The laughter got louder and louder. I was noticing one lady who was about to fall out of her chair laughing.

In fact she did. She hit the floor. You’ve heard the saying that someone died laughing. I thought this lady really did. She laughed so hard she lost her breath. It finally dawned on me that she was hyperventilating. We found a sack for her to breathe into and in a few minutes she was okay.

I still remember the joke I was telling when she lost her breath. It’s a good one.

I am thankful nobody stopped breathing at Jamestown but I was watching just in case.

The next night I was in Macon at the Baptist Village. This time I was speaking to a mixed audience of senior citizens. And they got their moneys worth too.

They were laughing out loud. Slapping their legs. Howling.

I was thinking when I was driving home that night.

There can’t be many more fulfilling moments a person can have than to stand in front of a group of senior citizens and cause them to laugh out loud and enjoy themselves.

When a person gets to the sunset of their life, there are things that happen that would tend to cause him or her to lose their sense of humor.

I’m thinking of such things as loneliness and physical illness and pain.

If somehow in God’s providence He gave me the gift to cause people to forget about their problems for a few minutes then I don’t ever want to quit using that gift.

I can tell you I was reminded in speaking to these two groups why I started doing this in the first place.

A merry heart really is like medicine.

And we all really do need to lighten up.