Today might be a good day to work some magic and I suspect it will not be as difficult as you might think.
I got this notion last week from the youngest member of Asbury. Her name is Hadley and her age is still calculated in months.
During VBS Hadley did something that stopped me in my tracks and completely turned my day around. It was magical.
Hadley smiled at me. Hadley noticed me!
Hadley acknowledged me. I was in her line of sight and it mattered to her.
I was so moved that I picked her up, walked her around and we looked at stuff. What an interesting dynamic!
At the end of the day, I am a real softie for smiles. They are gifts from God that we are allowed to offer person to person so that we might share beautiful moments.
Smiles are magic. They transcend culture and language barriers.
Smiles can span great distances.
Have you noticed how we smile when we are talking on the telephone? This says to me that we smile in our hearts first.
The space that often separates us can be so easily bridged with a smile. I have noticed that people who drive Jeeps and Harley-Davidsons smile and wave at each other in expressions of kinship.
Sometimes, it is easy to forget that even the most confident and secure among us needs to be reassured from time to time.
Sometimes, even those whom we feel have the thickest skin can feel remote, disconnected and lonely. A simple smile can clear out the cobwebs.
Years ago, Coca Cola capitalized on the magic by producing a series of commercials where distraught people offered each other a Coke and a smile.
Even old Job in all of his misery recalled the power of a smile. He did this when he remembered the good old days before all of his calamities:
When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them (Job 29:24 NIV).”
I will admit though, that a smile can be a risky move. After all, the recipient might not acknowledge us and smile back.
Isn’t it a good thing that Hadley is not yet into the pride and ego thing? I am guessing that when she smiled at me last week it was as natural as the water running in a mountain stream.
God designed her to do that! And, we call this grace.
It was a free lunch. It was a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.
It was an undeserved gift for me. It was a reminder that at least for that moment, me being alive mattered to that little girl.
To paraphrase Nelson Mandala, “You and I are more powerful than we know.” Maybe it is magic all along to be able to change the world with such little effort.