Ok, so I really don't know all languages; I even have a hard time with English and it’s my native tongue. But the one thing that does not change in any language is smiling.
After being in many different countries and cultures, I can tell you that some things in one country are acceptable while in others they are a huge offense. Feet/shoes are a big example of that. In Asian countries, they don't like feet; they consider them the dirtiest point on your body and hence, if you are pointing them at anyone, it’s like saying that you think they are lower than your feet. As I travel around the world, however, the one thing that is never an offense is a smile.
The other day as we were making our way from Chisinau, Moldova to Ocnita, Moldova, we missed our first train despite it being at the station for over an hour. (That’s a different story.) But God seriously has all things in His hands and knew it would happen. We got on the next train a few hours later and it made a few random stops along the way to pick up more people. At one of the stops, a mom and her two children sat diagonally behind me. The one child was a little boy about three years old. He was well behaved, just enjoying the ride. We made eye contact only a few times, but enough for me to see how adorable he was – yet another child that I want to stuff in my pack and take home with me. Anyways, we were just doing our own thing, then it happened; the infamous and spontaneous look that just lights up a child’s face: a smile.
We did not speak the same language, but that didn’t matter; for about 30 minutes, all I did was smile at him. He loved every minute of it. Does he know me? No. Do I know anything about him? Not at all. As I was just making this kid laugh and cackle, I noticed that the people who were sitting around us were peeking their heads out in the aisle and smiling with us. I have often felt that being a disciple of Christ meant doing all of these great things and speaking in such truthful ways that people would accept Christ into their hearts by the dozens. If the Lord is not telling you to do any of that, then don't try to do it on your own because it’s not going to work. There were a few times I wanted to try and talk with this boy’s mother, hoping she would know some English, but the Lord kept saying: No, just love this child where you both are and nowhere else.
We don't need to be or look a certain way to smile because a smile communicates so much whether the person smiles back or not. Christ is my joy. He is the reason that I smile.
I wish I could say that somehow I was able to talk with his mother and share Christ with them, but I did not. I did not even get his name nor did I get to say goodbye to him. I didn’t have feelings of regret for not saying anything, because the Lord just wanted me to smile and love this child as if I had known him forever.
You pass people on the streets every day and you don’t know who might be having a really bad day; the smile that you have on your face for Christ could be the little light that a person needs to see – no words, just a smile.
One of the biggest things I learned during month nine in Romania was really understanding what Jesus meant when He said that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, ( Matthew 9:37). I thought that being a worker was a generic duty that we would all do, but there are some workers who clear the field for the new harvest, some that dig deep into the new soil for the seeds, and some that are planters and waterers. Wherever you are in the process, it would not be a successful harvest without each and every part of it. In the same way, wherever Christ has us in His perfect plan for each of us, we should rejoice in the fact that He CHOSE us to be in that position.
I pray that that family will one day come to know the one true living God, but I know that He only wanted me to bring some of His joy into those people’s lives that day, and all I had to do was smile.
If you want to help me keep sharing my smile with the world and laboring where the Lord calls me, please pray for me and/or donate to my account by clicking here.
