It only takes a smile...

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the mass of hurting people in the world.  I am not talking about a montage on the evening news. These are people I know. People who walk through the halls of our clinic every week. Many of them carry four generations of poverty, pain, and despair. When I pray for them, I do it by clans. If I took time to whisper every name, I’d be late for work.

And I wonder if we are making any difference. I know Wendell does. He is a much better Christian than I am. When a demanding patient irritates me at the front desk, Wendell spends an extra ten minutes soothing their soul in the exam room. Sheesh. Why didn’t I think of that?

When I feel overwhelmed, though, I give myself a little shake. I’m no good to anyone in that state. So I remind myself of the psalmist who said, “I would have despaired if I had not seen the goodness of God in the land of the living.”

And, I’ve seen it. In people like our friend, Tass, who was Once an Arafat Man. Today, as a follower of Christ, he is helping shape an entirely new culture in the Middle East one family at a time. All because a wealthy patron smiled at the nervous bus boy in an upscale dining room one day.

I’ve seen it in sweet Sadie, a widow with a hard life when she came into our first clinic twenty years ago. She was gasping for breath that day. I barely remember the brief prayer I said while holding her hand and waiting for the ambulance. But Sadie says it was a turning point for her. These days she beams when she tells me the latest happenings in her beloved Methodist Church. And she includes Wendell and I in the list of birthday and anniversary cards she sends by the dozens.

When I remember people like these, the problems of life don’t seem so overwhelming. After all, Jesus really is the answer. And he can sometimes be found in a smile.