Main news for 16 July 2025

When the Lord said that Jairus's daughter had not died but was sleeping, people laughed at Him. Everyone who truly believes deeply knows this special kind of laughter. To a person who is unable to believe, what we believe looks ridiculous, and we ourselves appear to him a little beside ourselves, slightly insane.

The words about laughter in today's passage look rather strange. Imagine the situation: Jesus and His disciples have come into a house where everyone is weeping, and suddenly the weeping turns into laughter - not into astonished silence, but precisely into laughter. This is hard to imagine, which means it is exactly what needs to be understood and felt. A person laughs when he feels strength in himself, when he feels in control of the situation, when he rises above it. Laughter is the opposite of sacred awe. At the same time, laughter is an ambiguous phenomenon; at times we perceive it as something good.

Let us think about this once more. In the Epistle of James (4:9) we meet these words: be wretched and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning. Here the apostle does not say a word about some particular kind of laughter being turned to mourning. No, let all laughter be turned to mourning. Yes, the Lord calls us to perfect joy, but as long as the world is what it is, every kind of laughter is dangerous because it can turn into the laughter of the people who greeted Jesus in Jairus's house. And it is not for nothing that earthly life is often called a valley of tears in prayer.