True joy and a face that smiles

We were trying out a new-to-us restaurant the other night with a superb guitarist playing to the room — or for himself, really. Another couple kept glancing my way. When they moved to sit nearer the musician we had a short conversation. The woman told me, “You have a face that smiles.”

It was an unexpected gift dropped on my doorstep. My face, even in its prime, has never been what you’d call “eye candy.” These days it’s got “binkles,” as my little granddaughter phrases it.

But it is a face that smiles — most of the time. Not because life is “binkle-free,” but because I want to harvest its joy.

It was fascinating to learn recently of a popular late night talk show host who found his joy in a return to his faith when — as a young man — he was handed a small green New Testament on the street. Jesus’ message empowered him in a fresh way. The words walked seamlessly off the page into his life — and his atheism was a goner.

Something like his experience once happened to me. It was a similar slim New Testament volume — only in red — inscribed to my father. I was at a crossroads in my life when I came upon it. The first of our children had just married in an out-of-state ceremony. I returned home to Alaska in the cold and dark of January, not yet ready to absorb this change in the family. I fell into a depression. It was like being sucked into an undertow that kept dragging me farther and farther down.

It was a bleak and isolating time. Somehow I picked up that little New Testament — in a translation I hadn’t read before. The words of Jesus seemed brand-new. His message of hope, of comfort, and of joy began to draw me up. And I swam for the light.

The nearness and vibrancy of a living God who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” — who carries my story beyond what I can know — won out over the darkness.

It gave me a face that smiles.