Every year, I tell the Kindergarteners a secret. The teachers, the buddies and the students all hear the secret, and the rule is, they can’t tell anyone. Well, of course, they can tell their parents. I told them this secret last Sunday and I may remind them of it again this Sunday and then that will probably be the end of it until next year, when I tell then next group about it. The secret. It makes them smile.

You probably think I’m going to tell you the secret now, right?

Wrong. I’m not telling.

But if I did tell you, you would smile. You might even laugh.

So, there is another secret, a bigger one, that I can talk about.

We Christians like to laugh. We Christians laugh and we laugh a lot. That's the secret.

It hardly seems fitting for people called to be ambassadors of the next world, who are carrying a message to people bound for hell. The way of escape.

Once some friends of mine were doing a reading that was created to make people laugh—during a prayer meeting at the mission organization where I worked. It was a funny script. People couldn’t help but laugh. The laughter became contagious and almost everyone listening was laughing. We surprised ourselves with our inability to stifle or stop the laughs.

That was when one of the elder missionaries in the group stood and in his booming and dramatic radio voice said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart!” (Eccl. 7:2-3, KJV—I added the exclamation point to capture the anger and volume).

That old Christian didn’t think laughter was ok. It was a frivolous sin. We were a band of serious-minded people on a serious mission. Like Abraham and Sara, or not.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (Gen. 17:13)

The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ (Gen. 18:13)

And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” (Gen 21:6)

This is the laughter of our faith: laughter, the name of the covenant baby.

You can live life in a tragedy, or you can live life in a comedy.

Webster calls tragedy “a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror”

And a comedy is happy ending. Webster says it’s “the genre of dramatic literature dealing with the comic or with the serious in a light or satirical manner.’

Life is human tragedy walking down the aisle with divine comedy.

The magic trick with no sleight of hand. The transgressors forgiven. The unloved loved. The unchangeable changed.

His household is feeding and caring for Moses while Pharoah is out killing baby boys in attempt to get rid of his kind. It’s the patriarch reversing his hands in blessing. King Saul and King David. Queen Vashti and Queen Esther. Jonah complaining that God is gracious and merciful. Wine at a wedding where there was only water, lunch where there was nearly no food, the replacing of mourning wails with the stunned realization of life after hours or days of death. How could they not laugh with utter and unexpected joy?

The divine comedy is staged among tombs, where angels ask women why they are seeking the living among the dead. It’s the two walking down the road to Emmaus with a stranger and wondering if he’s the only visitor to Jerusalem who is clueless as to what had been going on these days. It's Eutychus falling asleep on the second floor, waking to find himself on the first with Paul having brought him back to life and now, heading back upstairs to listen to the rest of the message.

It’s God looking down at the kingdoms and rulers of the world and laughing at the paradox of the proud being cast down and the humble exalted. But also, it's truly seeing us, right here, right now. The day before us. The pains and sorrows and beyond, the smile, the chuckle, the full-on laugh. It’s his divine comedy with a beyond-happy happy ending.