Orthodox Parables and Stories: "Be the reason for someone to smile around you". Smile!

It was a message written by someone on a wall. It immediately caught my eye. I was stuck on this message until the road opened and the bus moved on.

I tried to do what this stranger said...to smile, but automatically, in a flash, the sorrows, the trials, the failures, the mourning, the illnesses of this life came to my mind.

No. I can't smile.
Why should I smile and how? Should I do it like the English who ask you "Are you happy with your lessons?" Are you happy with your activities?

To smile because I liked the lessons or the activities of my life? Do they understand what true joy, fulfilled and permanent joy will mean?

The bus moves on and I get off at the church of Saint Theodosius.

I go in... as if a faint smile appeared on my lips. It came out spontaneously in me. I could in there. Why;

I venerated the icons. The faces on the icons were so sweet, so peaceful. They made me smile. It was as if I had found a refuge, a harbor, an almost family comfort.

I needed it at that moment. It relieved my pain, it worked like a painkiller. A few minutes inside the temple and I felt that I can smile, because I have so many reasons. I am not alone in front of my "insurmountable" problems.

Inside the small temple, I found so many faces who heard my pain and my struggles. Their forms, their cheerful look supports me.

I feel that they do not listen to me indifferently... and let them remain unscathed. They raise my problem as their own agony and bring it in prayer to the throne of God.

Yes, I don't walk alone and defenseless in this harsh life... That's why I have reason to smile. That's why I will often remind myself, somewhat modified, of the prompt of the... wall:

"SMILE! THERE IS A REASON!".


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