The power of a smile

His name was John but I didn’t know that prior to the conversation. At first he was just another random classmate who is slightly older than the rest of us and he always made the corniest jokes…he was maybe in his early 40s or maybe life just made him look older. Either way I judged him based on his age and the way he looked.
today was just another random day in anatomy class. We were dissecting a pig and I’m pretty sure everyone just wanted to get the heck out of there as fast as possible. I was in line to get a look at some part of the cut up pig and John was in front me. He turned around and said, “nice shirt…are you a Christian?” and I said, “yes”. I was wearing a black shirt that read, “KNOW CHRIST KNOW PEACE.”
* John preceded to telling me his story…this is what I recall to the best of my knowledge:
” I used to go to church once upon a time and I stopped… I was at a very low point in my life and nothing seemed to be working out so my wife and I decided to move down here (Austin). It wasn’t a smooth transition as we hoped it’d be instead we’re out of jobs and I have to come back to school to get a better degree. The past few months has been the worst..I entered into depression and I tried to kill myself so many times and it never seemed to work. This morning I was driving to school and I tuned into a Christian radio station and I remember asking myself, “why me God?…is there really a God out there?….why am I going through all these” and that was when this song came on (Come to Jesus by Chris Rice) and I felt like it was speaking to me. I started singing and crying….and here you are listening to my story with a smile on face and it gives me hope because if you’re willing to listen to me then God is willing to do so much more for me. Thank you for smiling at me today and don’t ever stop smiling”
I learned two or three things that day: 1) John was a good person…who’s just going through the challenges of life, 2) John said he was going to go back to attending church and 3) always have a smile on your face no matter what you’re going through because you never know who’s life you’re going to save and 4) don’t judge a book by it’s cover :)