No particular background or skillset is needed for respite volunteers. This realization can offset stress and place the emphasis where it belongs: the chance to love people well in the name of Jesus.

Did you know families living with disability consistently name respite care as their top unmet need?
A recent Joni and Friends survey identified respite care as the top unmet need among families living with disability. Many parents and caregivers who lack respite care options have to just keep going despite exhaustion, isolation, and discouragement. Disability advocate Jennifer Evans joins the podcast to talk about the gift of respite—how providing this type of rest can enable families to experience the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
What is respite care?
An estimated forty-four million American adults serve as unpaid, informal family caregivers. Among caregivers, isolation, chronic stress, and depression run high, as responsibilities continue relentlessly.
Some families have expressed that the demands of raising a child with a disability can be overwhelming and all-consuming. And many marriages struggle under the strain of caregiving.
Respite care is essential for families navigating disability to thrive. From simple home visits to overnight programs, all forms of respite care share a common goal—to give parents and other caregivers a break. Depending on a family’s specific needs, respite care can take many forms. For example:

Babysitting
Home visits
Playdates
Structured events

How can respite care build relationships?
Beyond offering parents and other caregivers a break, Jennifer shared that respite care gives children and adults with disabilities the chance to build new friendships. Parents in need of respite can connect with one another; and often volunteer respite caregivers form relationships with the families they serve.
So often people with disabilities are isolated at home, only with their parent or caregiver.—Jennifer
At respite events, people with disabilities can build friendships with peers and volunteers. Community and connection can naturally arise from respite care events and ministries. For families who feel isolated, this experience of belonging can make all the difference.
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What if we don’t think about our limitations? What if we don’t consider the reality of our coming death and what comes afterwards? We’re probably going to be busy living for ourselves, plunging into pleasure and pursuing everything we can accomplish. We won’t think about God’s judgment or the consequences of what we do.

Psalm 90 isn’t very cheerful.
It is Moses’s meditation on the sinfulness and weakness of human life. Perhaps you can imagine an old Moses offering this prayer near the end of his time on earth.
The Psalm title calls him “the man of God.” That reminds us that Moses was the one chosen to lead God’s people out of bondage in Egypt and into the Promised Land. He had witnessed the terrible sufferings of God’s people. He’d experienced God’s mighty acts of deliverance. But Moses had also tasted the bitterness of Israel’s uprisings in the desert and the LORD’s just judgment on his people.
Over all those years, what had Moses learned? He’d learned about sin. About Israel’s sin, and about his own. That even when we have the best of intentions, our inherent weakness can hinder us in doing what’s right. And he had learned that every sinner deserves God’s holy wrath—Moses deserved it too.
In those years Moses also learned about the frailty of life. Think about the thousands of Israelites fallen in the desert: in battle, from snake bites, even consumed by God’s fire. Consider too, the forty years of wandering: God was just waiting for that sinful generation to die off. Wherever they went in the wilderness, the Israelites left graves behind them.
So compared to the everlasting God, Moses sees that mankind is almost nothing: “You carry them away like a flood; they are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up: in the morning it flourishes and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers” (Ps 90:5-6).
Viewed from one angle, that’s the nature of our existence: nasty, brutish, and short. We are born weak, spend our life sinning, and then we die, each one.
Psalm 90 can seem a bit jarring, especially if we’re optimistic about our life and the prospects of a new year. There’s more here, of course, for there is good news in this psalm, even the gospel of Christ. And it’s in light of everything we know about this life that Moses teaches us to pray in verse 12:
Teach us to number our days.
What is numbering? In a way, it’s as simple as a kindergarten exercise in math. You number the apples, or count the blocks, and you write down the answer. Well, we also have to number our days! But unlike counting apples, this is something we need help with: “Teach us, O God!” We’re not asking God to reveal how long we’re going to live. We pray that God will help us contend with the fact that our days of life are short.
When you’re a kid, of course, time seems to stretch on forever. Two months of summer vacation seem endless! But when you get older, a decade passes by in a flash. Suddenly you’re the senior guy at the office, or all the kids have moved out, and you ask, “Where did the time go?”
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The redemption theory holds that humor’s essence is found in humanity’s amused perception of ambiguity and incongruence, but also in God’s provision of humor as something that helps us deal with disorder, ambiguity, and pain that exist in a fallen world.

How many philosophers does it take to explain a joke? Quite a few, as it turns out. And not only philosophers. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have exerted themselves to explain exactly what makes people laugh. Although everybody understands intuitively what humor is, the concept of humor is still elusive, being difficult to define in a way that encompasses all of its facets.
Humor may evoke a sly grin or it may detonate explosive laughter. It might be conveyed through words or images or actions. We find it in in a vast array of situations, including photos, interpersonal encounters, articles, and skits. It takes on a wide range of forms, from knock-knock jokes to slapstick physical comedy to puns to double entendre.
There is humor in which the joker deprecates himself or herself, such as Oscar Levant’s quip, “Under this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character” or British politician Boris Johnson’s statement after having been demoted in Parliament: “My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”
Conversely, there is humor that deprecates other persons or social groupings. Consider Dorothy Parker’s wit directed against one of her contemporaries: “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.” Or, Roger Kimball’s wit directed against America’s scholarly class who consider themselves independent minds but are “huddled together in bovine complacency, mooing ankle-deep in its own effluvia, safe within its gated enclosure.”
In thus recognizing the considerable diversity on offer when it comes to humor, many intellectuals and comedians have drawn conclusions about the essence of humor. With that in mind, this post will explore seven of those theories, offering examples that confirm the theory and examples that call that theory in question. Finally, it will offer an alternative—theological—explanation of the essence of humor.
Here are seven of the most prominent theories about humor:
1. The Superiority Theory
Some theorists, including philosophers Plato, Thomas Hobbes, and Roger Scruton, believe the essence of humor is its ability to bring laughter to the masses but shame for whoever is the butt of the joke. Thus, according to this theory humor rides on its ability to make a portion of the audience feel superior to another person or group of people. For example: “If you were any dumber, you’d have to be watered twice a week.”
However, this theory doesn’t quite work because, just as we are able to win competitions without necessarily gaining a feeling of superiority, we are able to tell and hear jokes without necessarily feeling superior to the person who is the butt of the jokes. For example: “Police were called to a daycare, where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.”
2. The Incongruity-Resolution Theory
Some theorists, including philosophers Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Soren Kierkegaard, believed that the essence of humor is found in pointing out incongruities. Other philosophers have revised the theory to say that the essence of humor is the resolution of an incongruity. For example: “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.” Or, Groucho Marx’s quip: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
Yet, not all reinterpreted incongruities are humorous; conversely there are good examples of humor that doesn’t involve the resolution of an incongruity. For example: “A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his friend looked astonished, the man apologized: “I’m so sorry. I’m quite embarrassed. I thought it was spinach.’”
3. The Benign Violation Theory
Some recent theorists, such as Thomas Veatch, argue that the essence of humor is the non-threatening violation of some type of norm—moral law, social codes, linguistic norms, or similar. For example: As Demitri Martin once quipped: “I’m sorry’ and ‘I apologize’ mean the same thing. Unless you’re at a funeral.”