The video and song lyrics follow. Let me know what you think.

"Laughing With" Lyrics:

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late and their kid's not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they're mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say "We've got some bad new, sir,"
No one's laughing at God when there's a famine, fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they've lost all they got and they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God in a hospital
No one's laughing at God in a war

No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God

Laughing With by Regina Spektor from the album Far

Tomorrow I'm going on vacation with my family. Very kind friends let us use their place down in Florida. My little girl keeps asking when we're going on "cation." She asks if we'll see whales and sharks. Somehow someone made her aware of sharks. She says she wants to stay in the pool.

Last year I sat on the beach on the brink of starting work on a new book. I told God I didn't see how it could possibly happen, how I could possibly write it. But he enabled me day by day. I'm going to sit on that beach this year and just take time to thank him and remember and marvel at answered prayer. Milestones like that mean a lot to me.

The laptop is staying at home. It doesn't get to go on vacation. I'm going to turn off the email on my phone. No Twitter. No internet. I might go without electricity and indoor plumbing just for the heck of it. (Okay, maybe not.)

Small thing for people who have read this blog for awhile: we're going to rent a car this year. Our friends Wayne and Connie offered to let us borrow theirs again, but I just couldn't.

We aren't too intense when it comes to vacation. We like simple. Pool. Beach. Food. Pool. Beach. Joshua Quinn and I are excited to watch the French Open and root on Roger Federer. The girls like to watch cooking shows on the Food Network. I've got two books on Lincoln I'm going to read. I really enjoy history. I like reading about other people's problems. Makes mine seem smaller.

I'm going to wake up every morning and go read my Bible on the beach. It's kind of God to give me this time of rest with the four people I love the most in this world.

Because I'm proud I get hurt when people disagree with me strongly. Because I'm proud I feel the need to give thirteen qualifications before I make an argument, not usually because I'm a swell guy but because I love for people to love me and loathe for them to dislike or misunderstand me. Because I'm proud I hedge my criticisms so that I won't have to publicly repent and recant when I go too far and get something wrong. Because we're proud, protectors of self more than lovers of truth, we often don't discuss things with candor or with verve....

Here's hoping against hope that thinking adults, Christians especially, can sustain meaningful discourse without resorting to name-calling or cowardly equivocation. Christ calls us to love, which is something entirely different than being a jerk or playing it safe. A.W. Tozer got it right: "The kingdom of God, has suffered a great deal of harm from fighters--men who would rather fight than pray; but the kingdom of God has also been done great harm by men who would rather be nice than right."