Smile

Can you predict a person’s future based on their smile? In a 2011 TED Talk, Ron Gutman summarized the results of some smile research. For example, one study looked at pre-1950 baseball cards, and measured a player’s smile. The average lifespan of a player with no smile turned out to be 72.2 years, but if a player was beaming, he had lived to a ripe ol’ 79.9 years. The bigger the smile, the longer the player had lived.

In another study cited by Gutman, smiles in yearbook pictures were compared to the success and well-being of those students throughout their lives. The researchers were able to predict how fulfilling and long-lasting their marriages were, how well a student performed on tests of well-being, and how inspiring a student was to others. The bigger the smile, the higher the student’s level of success had turned out to be.

Looking back at my high school yearbook picture above, I think Mr. Gutman would say I am doomed. And you would probably agree, if this was the only picture of me you ever saw. However, it is only one snapshot of one second during what had to be one very bad day for me. After all, I was forced to wear (gasp!) a tie.

Since the picture is of me, I know more about the subject than anyone else, and can definitely say the picture is not indicative of the rest of my story. The truth is, I actually enjoyed high school, and nearly every other picture in the yearbook with me in it demonstrates that somehow. Horsing around with teammates, goofing around with friends, and yes, even cracking the occasional smile. Yet, if that picture was the only thing you knew about me, you’d probably say I was destined to be the grumpy, miserable failure I appeared to be at that moment.

The good news is God already knows the rest of my story, and the rest of your story, too. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’“ (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV). 

The future looks good, regardless of whether you’re smiling at any given instant or not.

Lou Swanson

“I can see your name is Lou,” the TV reporter confidently stated as he approached my grandfather outside of his beach cottage. The reporter looked up at the “Lou’s Haven” sign over the cottage door, and continued, “Can I get your last name, too, and then ask you a few questions?” He had come to do a story about some recent happenings at the beach, and had seen my grandfather puttering around outside.

All the beach cottages had names. Lou’s Haven sat next to the Patricia Lee and the Silver Sands, just down from the Pilot and the Open Deck, near the Summer Place and the Sandbox. In my grandfather’s case, Lou built the cottage. Lou named the cottage. Lou sold the cottage to my grandparents. But my grandfather was not Lou.

So with a mischievous gleam in his eye, my grandfather – Joe Connolly – responded, “Swanson. With an ‘O’. Lou Swanson,” and then proceeded to answer the reporter’s questions.

That night, after the segment aired with Joe Connolly’s face and “Lou Swanson” emblazoned across the bottom of the screen, the calls flooded in to my grandparents. Lou Swanson? Everyone wanted to know, why Lou Swanson? My grandfather’s response: “Well, the reporter didn’t seem interested in my real name, so I said ‘OK. Have it your way.’”

And my way is typically right on par with that reporter – making snap judgments and inferring things before gathering all the facts, before asking questions, and without taking time to listen. We are supposed to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19), but we tend to reverse the two so we are quick to speak and slow to listen.

I mean, who’s got time to be patient these days while someone drones on and on and on about their situation or what they are going through. Can’t we can make a few quick assumptions after they’ve said a couple of words, and solve the problem in three speedy bullet points? I’ve got a full schedule here! Time to move on to the next issue already!

How can you tell if you’re not listening? When you start finishing someone’s sentences for them, when you start thinking “Oh, I know where this is going” as someone starts talking, and when you assume someone’s name is Lou. 

Take heed and listen up, because as the Message Bible so eloquently puts it, “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude” (Proverbs 18:13).

What if . . .

My eyes snapped open when I heard it. I had been starting to doze off on a bus tour as part of a professional conference. My mind lazily wandered from one foggy, disconnected thought to the next. Looking out the window as the bus chugged down the highway, I caught a glimpse of a sign for an approaching exit, and recognized the name of the town.

A girl I went to college with had grown up in that town. My thoughts drifted back to years ago, and I remembered, recounted and reminisced as my eyes drooped. Then my mind switched to questions: What’s she’s doing? Where is she now? What if things had turned out different …?

Anything can trigger a memory. These reminders conjure up thoughts, feelings and emotions that range from comforting to spine-tingling. A certain song prompts you to remember a specific event. A smell reminds you of Grandma’s kitchen. A unique sound transports you back to the place where you first heard it.

In my case, it was a simple place name that caused my thoughts to meander. But I was a different person back in college, with different priorities, different thoughts, and different motivations.

Where does your mind go when it wanders? Ever catch yourself wondering or dreaming or hoping things could’ve been different or better? There is a danger in letting our thoughts repeatedly return to the past, especially if that past did not include God. If we continually dwell on what was, then we begin to lose focus on where we are right now, and lose sight of where we want to go.

So before my thoughts drifted too far off the road with my “What if …?” question, I heard “Then you wouldn’t know me.” Like sudden, strong gust of wind, the Lord snapped me back to the present tense, and the fog blew away with His answer. I was instantly awake, alert, and looking around to see who on the bus was invading my thoughts.

Once we know the Lord, He will provide corrections to our course as needed. Which is why Isaiah says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it’” (30:21).

Are you listening?

Faith

www.crh.noaa.gov

The fog would roll in like a magician, eventually making things invisible. From my grandparents oceanfront cottage, I marveled as the fogbank washed the colors out of other cottages further down the beach, turning them gray until they finally disappeared.

The fog enveloped our cottage too, but it never seemed as thick and dramatic as it did down the beach. As a boy, I wanted to be in the thick fog, not the flimsy, wispy fog around our place. I always wanted to walk down to at least the O’Brien’s cottage; it always seemed to vanish. I thought about how cool it would be to go there and not be able to see my hands at the end of my extended arms.

So, I’d wander with my bemused grandaunt down the beach, but could never quite get into The Fog, even in front of the O’Brien’s place. The truly dense, thick, exciting fog always seemed to be somewhere else, just out of reach. 

Nowadays, I read Chapter 11 in the Book of Hebrews, the Faith Hall of Fame, and I can hear that same little boy, wondering and longing. Wouldn’t it be cool to move to some strange land at God’s direction like Abraham, not knowing what is going to happen. Or spearhead a huge, building project like Noah. Or be part of some unbelievable miracle, like the Israelites passing through the Red Sea or making the walls of Jericho crumble.

In the verse immediately following his Hall of Fame list, Paul writes, “since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1). The inductees to the Hall of Faith are not literally enveloping us like a fog bank. Their stories are held up as examples, to bear witness, of what awesome and incredible things are possible through faith in God.

Things so incredibly awesome, they seem out of reach.

However, we don’t have to go very far to demonstrate our faith. God hasn’t called us all to be missionaries to a foreign land, or to inspire great crowds of people, or to be a miracle worker. But He has made us parents and spouses and children and acquaintances and employees and friends and business owners. 

And thanks to those relationships and connections, we don’t have to go wandering off to be in the thick of abundant opportunities. There are plenty of chances to display the calm confidence that faith generates, right where we are.

Broken

When the wineglass shattered, rejoicing ensued. Much rejoicing. (See and hear for yourself here). My daughter and I danced, we slapped high fives, and we squealed and shouted so loudly in the detached garage that my wife heard us from inside the house with all the doors and windows closed tight. That shattering glass was our last ditch effort to get some part of her science experiment to work, and after hours and hours of effort and frustration, a short celebration was very much in order.

The experiment was supposed to be relatively easy: use sound to break wineglasses at their resonant frequency. We pummeled a variety of glasses with sound for hours and hours one afternoon with no success. We tried wineglasses; we tried glasses without stems; we even tried a mug. We tried not to get frustrated as the failures mounted.

After nightfall, we set up one more glass, and with the loudspeaker and amplifier cranked to 11, the glass exploded. After all that time, we broke only one glass, but what joy that one brought.

Consider how often God’s message of love and mercy and redemption and peace gets presented, and then rejected, by one person. I sat in church for years like a stout mug, with that message bouncing off my thick head. Just between 1^st grade and the end of high school alone, I probably sat through about 1,000 sermons and Sunday school-type classes. And who knows how many hundreds of thousands of times God tried to get my attention during the rest of my life when I wasn’t even near a church.

How many times did I stubbornly resist? 

How many times have you?

When His message finally resonated with me, I broke down and humbly admitted I needed Him. Apparently, when that happens, Jesus says “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). 

So if my daughter and I get excited enough to dance and holler when one glass breaks after many hours of trying, imagine what the celebration in Heaven is like after years and years, and thousands upon thousands of attempts to get a person to take that step of repentance? “Rejoicing” might be an understatement. Dancing, high fives, and shouts of joy are probably just the beginning. The celebration might be downright raucous.

Have you given those angels something to celebrate?