A smile. It is something that is not absent in our fondest memories, our ideal imaginations of the future, or our Facebook profile pictures. It is taken for granted at times, but it is hard to deny that the act of smiling exudes from something so central within us.
Yet despite the common childhood depiction of Jesus with a big smile on his face, the Gospel accounts share no record of Jesus smiling or laughing. If the One that we are to imitate never cracked a smile, what authority and provision do we have to do so?
The Argument for Smiling
Proverbs 15:13a (ESV) reads “A glad heart makes a cheerful face. ”Here we can see the connection that Scripture makes between the state of our hearts and the state of our physical appearances, specifically our faces. There is also a clear progression and order: the heart makes the face, not the other way around.
If this is true, we must then examine the heart of a Christian to see if it contains the gladness that propels the cheerful face, or the smile.
In 1 Peter 1, Peter reminds us that through the resurrection of Jesus, we have been born again into a living hope. In verse 8, he says that although we have never seen Jesus, we believe him and rejoice with unspeakable joy that is filled with glory. A joy so deeply rooted in our inner hearts that is not explainable with words.
In Romans 15:13, Paul hopes that as we trust in God, he will fill us with joy and peace.
Ultimately, Ephesians 3 helps us see that as the Spirit strengthens us in our inner being, Jesus Christ dwells in our hearts!
And yes, there are no recorded accounts of a smile on Jesus’s face. However, it is very difficult to imagine any other expression on his face in situations such as Matthew 19, where he tenderly welcomes children near him, or Luke 7, where he is described as “eating and drinking”. Many have written of the deep joy and gladness that Jesus had, which must have translated into a cheerful expression on his face.
These are only a few of the scriptural evidence that helps to see what is truly inside of our hearts as Christians. Through our relationship with God, we have unspeakable joy, a deep peace, and ultimately Jesus, whom himself has deep joy, indwelling within our hearts. I do not think that there is a more consistently glad or merry heart in this world than that of a Christian.
That glad and merry heart should lead us to have a radiant countenance.
All The Time?
Then begs the question, should we be smiling all the time? Since Christ will always dwell in our hearts, shouldn’t we be always smiling?
In the second half of Proverbs 15:13, which reads “but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed”. It is clear through the juxtaposition of the two halves that our hearts are able contain both gladness and sorrow, both of which are expressed differently.
Ecclesiastes 3 shares a similar sentiment, that there is a time and season for everything under the heavens. There are times to laugh, but there are also times to weep.
We are not to forcibly put on a smile in times of sorrow. Our hearts do not operate in a “fake it ‘till you make it” system. Job understood this well. In Job 9:27-28, Job recognizes that his attempts to mask the deep sorrow of his situation with a cheerful face will be in vain. His outward expression cannot control the condition of his heart.
Again, there is a clear order, the face is the reflection of the heart. This is perhaps why we are able to discern the difference between the smile that is on Joker’s face after committing heinous crimes versus the smile that is on a mother’s face after holding her baby for the first time. Through their expressions, although outwardly similar (let’s just imagine for a second that Joker doesn’t have big, scary red lips) we are really seeing the contents of that person’s heart.
We know that as much as Jesus was filled with joy, his heart was also filled with many other things that prevented him from smiling. Anger and sadness at a broken world, compassion for the weak and lowly, determination to obey the Father, and the heaviness of the cross. He seemingly understood best that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh.”
The Encouragement to Smile
To be honest, the idea for this article came to me during a recent time in my life where it was incredibly difficult to smile. I was battling through a lack of confidence that made me doubt my self-worth, a purposelessness in my 9-5 career, a puzzling loneliness that rushed in despite the community I had around me, all amounting to a craving for apathy and isolation. After a few weeks, I found myself having spoken about 20 words and having smiled 0 times.
Then, one of those days, due to the construction being done at my house, a picture frame that I have hanging above me near my desk came undone and landed corner-first onto my head. I thought I would be filled with the utmost rage, but quite the opposite happened. I smiled. Yes, I was flabbergasted for sure, but my smile was actually rooted in faith.
I smiled because I recognized that the coincidence of one bad thing piling up on another was no coincidence at all. God was meticulously in control of every struggle, even the angle and velocity that the picture frame hit my head. It was a smile of relief that God was not absent in my life in my time of struggle and need. He was still proving himself to be Emmanuel, God with us.
Brothers and sisters, even Jesus promises us that we will have trouble in this world. Grief is haunting, pain is excruciating, and the emptiness is suffocating. In different ways, we have all been there.
But in that same breath, Jesus reminds us that he has overcome the world and instructs us to take heart! Because of what he has done, we have a hope for the future beyond this world, even in our present suffering. And when we get the second to lift our heads and see the things to come, we have more than enough reasons to bear a glad heart.
The book of Revelation speaks of a new heaven and a new earth that is to come. There, our God will wipe away the final drops of tears from our eyes and we will behold streets made of pure gold. Most importantly, we will be in perfect fellowship with the one who made us, and we will truly see him, cheerful face to cheerful face, and enjoy him forever.
I guess this really wasn’t an encouragement to smile, but an encouragement to fix our eyes on Jesus. In him alone is the power that makes our hearts deeply glad! And we all know at this point what a glad heart results in 🙂
This is the final series from the 2023-2024 Young Writers Cohort, with the authors writing about a topic they feel strongly about.
Photo Credit: Nick Fewings