He is All Around Us

I saw Jesus today. I see Him every day. He’s in every pair of eyes I look into. Sometimes I don’t treat Him as well as I should, most of the time actually. Sometimes I walk away from Him and give my worship to something else, because like it or not, we are worshipping someone or something every minute of our waking lives. I’m really trying to make that someone Jesus twenty-four hours a day. I still fail. I didn’t fail quite as often today as yesterday though.
Others see Jesus in me (even if they don’t know what they see). This is very humbling. Most of the time I don’t realize it, and when I do, I usually don’t know how or why, but today it was pointed out to me, at least in one instance.
I was substituting for a teacher’s aide in a junior high school in upstate New York. I didn’t think I was doing anything out of the ordinary, but apparently the people accustomed to the emotional climate of that school thought I was.
My students have a habit of giving me nicknames. I really don’t mind. I figure, whatever they come up with, I’ve been called worse at some point in my life, and it’s incentive for them to be creative.
I was on eighth grade lunch duty today when I met Kori. Kori gave me a nickname that made me smile even more brightly that I already was. He looked me straight in the eyes, over a half eaten piece of school cafeteria pizza, “Can I call you Mr. Sunshine?” he asked with a glimmer in his own eyes that brightened the cafeteria on an already brilliant spring afternoon.
I saw Jesus today. He spoke to me in the voice of an eighth grade boy. He told me I smiled like the sun.

And I thought I was supposed to be teaching Kori and his friends something.