Have you ever found yourself laughing in a dark moment? Maybe you got the giggles while awaiting a medical test result, or you and a sibling camped out in a hospital waiting room having the Go Fish tournament of a lifetime while a parent was undergoing surgery.

It can feel strange, even guilt-inducing to play in a time of difficulty. But something about play in times of suffering can also seem natural and needed. That something, it turns out, comes from God’s design for humanity.

In “The Paradox of Playfulness,” Courtney Ellis explores a Christian vision for the relationship between the difficulty of life and the desire to play.

“As Thomas Hobbes famously wrote, life can be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,’” writes Ellis. “Scripture describes our lives as fading as quickly as “the flowers of the field” (1 Pet. 1:24). We don’t have much time here on this earth, and the time we do have overflows with obstacles, tedium, and heartache. The paradox of play is this: We engage in whimsy not because life is easy but because life is difficult.”

When the going gets tough, the joy of the gospel says that you are allowed to RSVP “yes” to your invitation to play.