Smile

 

Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

Philippians 4:4-5

There are many writings and teachings about the power of positive thinking. Some people will tell you that those teachings are less than faithful, that it's a mind game. I don't believe that. Our attitudes, our thoughts, are very important. A positive attitude, a smile, a cheerful approach, those things do tend to make even the hard times a bit easier to bear.

Recently I saw a television show that included a young woman with an incredibly sunny attitude. As they did a flashback segment we saw her dealing with adversity, turning around the most humiliating moments as if they were nothing. In other words as life handed her lemons, no, make that, as life threw lemons at her head, most often leaving a big mark and sometimes causing her to fall on her behind, she continually jumped up, dusted herself off and made the best of things. In the flashback scenes we saw her time after time moving on to the next thing with the great confidence that this time would be different. Cockeyed optimism? Perhaps.

The flashback scene occurred because the young woman was worried, the first time her family had ever seen her about to give up, that no one would remember her, that she had in fact not left a mark anywhere. Then she read the messages people had written in her yearbook. Every single one noted her smile, her sunny attitude. She was remembered as the girl who made the best of the worst, who smiled in the face of sure humiliation and great adversity. She was told time and again, that her smile and her cheerfulness had eased the angst of another. Wow!

It may be just a silly television program but that was an amazing point, a huge lesson for all of us. I am certainly not opposed to being given a task for God that would leave a huge legacy. I pray to serve Him and to do great things for Him. Still, after seeing that show my perspective has changed. I want to be the person who smiled through the pain, the one who didn't complain about small setbacks, who trusted that the next attempt was the one that would succeed.

The girl on the show didn't seem to have a resource for her positivity. I do and so do you! We are children of God, drowning in lavish love. (1 John 3:1) We can look forward to home, to heaven. If the very next thing doesn't work out, if it causes embarrassment, if we look foolish trying, so be it. Every attempt we make here may fail but GREAT NEWS.... We're going home! When we get there, if we've done everything in faith, with confidence in Abba's love for us, He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”