Smiles Spread Sunshine

A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. (Proverbs 17:22 NKJ)

Usually when I think of the above Bible verse, I just want to remember the first part of the verse. I like thinking about the good medicine of smiles and laughter, but it’s not as good thinking about those with broken spirits and sadness in their hearts. I did use that last part of the verse in my second Hollyhill book, Orchard of Hope. Early in the story, Wes is struggling with his leg injury and feeling some of those broken spirit moments. I have him remembering that verse. In that book, we find out more of Wes’s story and eventually joy comes to call on him.

But sometimes it’s hard to hold onto that merry heart when things in life aren’t going so well or at least in the way we wish. And yet, often many do find a way, with the Lord’s help, to keep smiling or at least not lose their smiles completely no matter the life road they are walking.

Nobody needs a smile so much as the one who has none to give. So get used to smiling heart-warming smiles, and you will spread sunshine in a sometimes dreary world. – (Lawrence G. Lovasik)

Smiles have a way of brightening our world. And of course, those smiles I’ve captured of the grandkids through the years keep bringing a smile to my heart. This picture was a few years back when this kid turned ten. He looks plenty happy about reading double figures in age.

I do a regular feature, Friday smiles, on my Facebook page. Sometimes it’s a challenge to come up with something funny, but I keep trying to make those who check out the posts on my page to find a reason to smile. Some of the jokes I post are pretty corny or as those who comment might say, “groaners,” but they can still be fun.

But who says we can only smile on Fridays? Nobody. Smiles are surely welcome any day of the week, and tonight I went back into the archives of my posts to find a Sunday smile from nearly a decade ago.  Hope you will enjoy the repeat.

If you have a computer and if you have worked with Windows, some of this is sure to make you nod and maybe smile. Newer operating systems in the computers I’ve had of late don’t seem to give you the “blue screen of death” as often, and thank goodness, someone finally reworded that “Fatal Error” warning. When that came up, I always wanted to hide under my desk. Nowadays, mine just makes a rude noise when I hit a wrong something. But plenty of glitches still happen with computers or if you have a non-glitchy computer now, you’ve probably experienced some glitches in the past. So, I think you’ll enjoy the following.

At an expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got one thousand miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: if GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

• For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
• Every time they painted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
• Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to re-install the engine. (or at least reboot it.)
• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
• New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
• Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
• GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Dept.
• Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• You’d press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Funny, my car does have a start button I push to shut off the engine. Maybe the car makers decided some of that wasn’t all bad.

Hope you have plenty of reason to smile and can share your merry heart medicine with those you meet along the road of life.

Do smiles help you have a merry heart?

And the Winner is:

I gave Dana McR. a reason to smile earlier when I let her know she was the winner of my blog giveaway. She responded right away and chose Scent of Lilacs for her prize.

I’ll be doing more giveaways on here soon. So, watch for those in the weeks and months ahead.