The Gift of a Smile

I’ve been watching Ali play softball this summer. I enjoy watching the games. It seems like the perfect summer evening activity. Besides the game, I also enjoy watching the people who are there.

This recreation league draws a few regulars. Among them is a man who I will call Bobby. Bobby has a mental disability but functions pretty well on his own. I’ve seen him cruising around town on his bike, stopping at fast food restaurants with a buck or two in his pocket. He’s an older guy with graying hair and really nice wrinkles around his eyes when he smiles.

Bobby smiles a lot.

Every time I’m at the field I watch Bobby. He usually sits on the bottom row of the metal bleachers – right on the end behind home plate. From that vantage point he can see nearly everyone who comes and goes around the fence. He looks intently at every face that goes past. Some of the faces that pass by him are bored. Some are focused on where they are going and don’t take much notice of an old man. There are faces that show distraction, excitement, worry or disinterest.

It doesn’t really matter to Bobby. He’s just waiting for someone to look him in the eye.

And when they do, his face lights up.

All Bobby wants is to be connected. For someone to actually see him so that he can smile and interact in some way that is positive and good. He has a gift for everyone if they will just have the courage to look.

As I sat there on Sunday night it occurred to me that perhaps Bobby is a lot more like God than most people would ever imagine. Perhaps God is sitting on the sidelines somewhere looking at each of us exactly the same way Bobby does – staring at our faces. Maybe God feels an excruciating longing – wanting connection.

What if God is present in our daily lives waiting to look into our eyes – waiting to look past all of our mistakes and shortcomings and tell us that all of creation is good and that we are loved?

Could that be possible?

If so, it would mean that I would have to scrape together enough courage and look up out of my own small world and into the eyes of the God of creation. A more frightening possibility would be that I would then need to give myself permission to let God look clear-eyed and honestly at me and hear him call me beloved.

Thanks, but no.

It’s so much easier to let people remind me of all the ways that I have let them down. To focus on the things I might wish I had done differently. To dwell on the fact that I’m not a pastor anymore and that there are countless people who see me as a failure.

It’s easier to feel pitiful than it is to feel forgiven.

Bobby and his smile are teaching me the essence of grace. I’m learning that Bobby and God have gifts for all of us – if we will just have the courage to look up and outside of ourselves.

These warm summer evenings at the ball field are also teaching me that grace trumps pitiful every time.

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I have some family who read this blog. My church email was shut down without any prior notice so I didn’t get a chance to let anyone know an alternate email address. I also lost my address book at the same time. You can contact me at piketanya(at)yahoo.com.