A few weeks ago, when I was super busy and stressed from school, I had an incident happen that I can't seem to shake from my memory. It was the end of the week - I had been working long, frustrating hours for close to 2 weeks, and I was at the end of my rope. I was exhausted and annoyed, and not hiding it very well. While practicing with my one of my students, she said to me, "Teacher, you should smile. You're so beautiful when you smile." Wow. Owned. This meant even more to me, because she was one of my lowest-level students. That was very difficult for her to say, and yet she made the effort and said it anyway.
Jin-hee's statement didn't get me just because I was happy that she was speaking English. It didn't even appeal to my ego, in that she sort of backhandedly called me beautiful. It got to be because she had to tell me to smile. I was the older, supposedly more mature person, I was the teacher, I was the cultural ambassador. And she had to remind me to smile, because all I was thinking about was myself.
Proverbs says that "a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. I can't help but wonder if that statement was meant both ways. A cheerful heart would certainly be good medicine for one's self, and a crushed spirit equally discouraging. But isn't it equally true that a cheerful heart would be good medicine for someone else, and that when you are sad you would bring those around you down just as quickly as you bring yourself down?
Of course, you can't always just summon a cheerful heart on command. But that's where God comes in. I don't think it was a coincidence that week, I had sorely neglected my time with the Lord. I convinced myself that it was a necessity - that I simply did not have time to read my Bible that week. But, because of that decision, my relationships with my students, my co-teachers, and my friends all suffered during that time.
Making time for the Lord shouldn't ever be something that get's regulated to the bottom of the to-do list, no matter what else is going on in your life. Because when the going gets tough, when you're stressed and frustrated and angry, when you need a cheerful outlook on life more than ever but are the least able to supply one, that's the time that you're going to need God more than ever. When your spirit is crushed, He is the medicine you need to make your heart sing again.
Jin-hee's statement didn't get me just because I was happy that she was speaking English. It didn't even appeal to my ego, in that she sort of backhandedly called me beautiful. It got to be because she had to tell me to smile. I was the older, supposedly more mature person, I was the teacher, I was the cultural ambassador. And she had to remind me to smile, because all I was thinking about was myself.
Proverbs says that "a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. I can't help but wonder if that statement was meant both ways. A cheerful heart would certainly be good medicine for one's self, and a crushed spirit equally discouraging. But isn't it equally true that a cheerful heart would be good medicine for someone else, and that when you are sad you would bring those around you down just as quickly as you bring yourself down?
Of course, you can't always just summon a cheerful heart on command. But that's where God comes in. I don't think it was a coincidence that week, I had sorely neglected my time with the Lord. I convinced myself that it was a necessity - that I simply did not have time to read my Bible that week. But, because of that decision, my relationships with my students, my co-teachers, and my friends all suffered during that time.
Making time for the Lord shouldn't ever be something that get's regulated to the bottom of the to-do list, no matter what else is going on in your life. Because when the going gets tough, when you're stressed and frustrated and angry, when you need a cheerful outlook on life more than ever but are the least able to supply one, that's the time that you're going to need God more than ever. When your spirit is crushed, He is the medicine you need to make your heart sing again.
Proverbs 17:22
A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
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