![\"Hike](\"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Walk-Humor-Quote.jpg\")
Hike on. With a sense of humor, of course.<\/p><\/div>\n
Perhaps those who take the long walk through life a bit too seriously should consider that God most certainly has a sense of humor. God made the porcupine, the rhinoceros, the banana slug. And God made you.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always liked that description of the Almighty found in Psalm 2:4: \u201cThe one whose throne is in heaven sits laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Genesis records that when Sarah gave birth to a son at age 90, she said: \u201cGod has brought me laughter and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.\u201d She and her husband Abraham, then 100, named their son Isaac, which means he laughs.<\/p>\n
An ancient Eastern Orthodox Church tradition relates that the raised-from-the-dead Lazarus laughed for years after Jesus commanded him to \u201cRise, take up your bed and walk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever since Norman Cousins\u2019 landmark book, The Anatomy of an Illness<\/em>, health professionals, as well as many ministers and rabbis, are rediscovering the healing power of humor. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association<\/em> actually scientifically proved what Cousins and countless generations of anecdotal evidence had pointed out: laughter is useful in fighting serious illness.<\/p>\n During a hearty laugh, the diaphragm, heart, lungs, thorax, abdomen, and even the liver and kidneys are given a gentle, even therapeutic, massage. Cousins calls laughter \u201cInternal Jogging.\u201d With all due respect to Cousins, who wrote his book in the 1970s at the height of the jogging boom, perhaps we should instead call laughter \u201cInternal Walking.\u201d<\/p>\n Walking, hiking and humor have one more use in common: each fights pain. Laughter, like walking, activates the human brain\u2019s secretion of morphine-like molecules called endorphins, which in turn override pain, perk us up, and can give us \u201cathlete\u2019s high.\u201d The retreat of pain is accompanied by an increase in mobility. So the more we walk and laugh, laugh and walk, the better we feel.<\/p>\n Only when faith falters, when heart and step are unsure, are we afraid to laugh in God\u2019s presence. A person without a sense of humor is like a tender-footed walker, wincing at every pebble in the path.<\/p>\n Walk with laughter.<\/p>\n Footnotes<\/strong> \u2022 Want to make God laugh? Limerick Rut A woman was stuck in a rut. P.S. Interested in more reasons to hike for your health? Check out HIKE for Health & Fitness: Slim Down, Shape Up, and Reconnect with Nature<\/a><\/p>\nHow laughing improves our health<\/h2>\n
\n\u2022 What makes you laugh on a walk? What do you think would make you laugh?<\/p>\n
\nTell him your plans.<\/p>\n
\nBy Madeleine Begun Kane<\/p>\n
\nShe\u2019d tripped, falling down on her butt.
\nShe was wedged in so tight,
\nShe might be there all night.
\nSeems its risky to text while you strut.<\/p>\n