A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. Proverbs 17:22 (NLT)
I am traveling this week. There is a group of us so I am sharing a room with someone. I get up really early. So as not to wake up my roommate, I leave the hotel and go to a restaurant to have my coffee and my worship (not necessarily in that order).
The first day I went to a restaurant to the right of the hotel. I walked in to an almost empty restaurant with another couple sitting at a table. Keep in mind, it's early so this is the end of the shift for the folks working. The hostess/waitress seated me and the entire time was complaining about how busy she was. She told me she wasn't going to get to leave on time and how much she had to do. I told her I was sorry and sat down.
With each person that came in, she did the same thing and she was also complaining to the people in the back. At one point, the man sitting in the table next to me said "It's a little chaotic in here isn't it?"
The next day, I went to the restaurant to the left. I walked in to three tables of people and a host/waiter who greeted me, talked with me and the other customers and laughed with us. I came back to the restaurant on the left every day since.
It is really plausible that the lady at the first restaurant was having a really bad day and that she is not normally so negative but today's Bible text kept popping into my head along with the question "Do I ever do this? Are there days when your challenges keep you from being good medicine?"
Whether we are a hostess, waiter, manager, parent, co-worker or CEO, how we treat people matters. It has a ripple effect on other people's days. The thing to ponder is we leave our mark and often don't see the effect we have on people.
This experience made me more aware of my attitude and how I respond to people. I want to walk away from every situation having left a positive, happy experience in someone's life. I bet Jesus did that.