Meandering Monday - Smiling the Blues Away - Martin Wiles

Welcome to Meandering Monday, where we take a trip back to an earlier post and enjoy it again. 

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. Proverbs 17:22 NLT

My mother is an expert at getting freebies.

 

When she heard about a local promoter giving away free tickets for a comedy show to pastors and their wives, she made the contact. Even though my father has been dead for a number of years—and my mom has since remarried—she still considers herself a pastor’s wife.

 

Sure enough, the promoter granted her and my wife and me tickets, and we struck out for a night of laughs from three Christian personalities. We needed the laughs. All of us had endured a stressful three weeks. A night away seemed to be the perfect ticket.

 

Laughter is good for the soul. The old cliché that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile has been around in one form or another for many years. Variables involved in actually proving the truth of how many muscles it requires to do each are also numerous. But the conclusion remains steadfast: smiling is better for our health than frowning.

 

People respond to facial expressions—especially a smile. The expression, “Give a smile to get a smile,” is accurate most of the time. Frowning at someone who is smiling at me is extremely difficult, and if I’m smiling others will normally reciprocate.

 

On bad days, I can smile myself into a better mood. If I choose to smile, my attitude will usually follow. While times exist when I need to frown—such as in times of grief—smiling helps me reinterpret my circumstances and drive away the everyday woolies. After all, a broken spirit dries the bones.

 

More energy is expended by frowning and adopting a negative attitude than it is by smiling and cuddling a positive frame of mind. Smiles relieve stress. When stress is diminished, the immune system is boosted, blood pressure is lowered, and we stay positive.

 

Whom can you share a smile with today?

 

Prayer: Eternal Lord and Savior, when the world around us needs a smile, enable us to give them one.

Tweetable: Whom can you share a smile with? 

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