Saying "Hi" to Lilly - Christianity Today

Earlier this week I joined a friend for lunch in a local restaurant. While we were eating, a small girl and her mother came through the front door and headed for the table closest to us. The child instantly caught my eye. She was beautiful, stunningly beautiful: a perfect face and a mass of golden curly hair that reminded me of the girl who sings “Tomorrow, Tomorrow,” in the Broadway musical, Annie.

As the mother and daughter came nearer, I smiled at the child, wiggled my fingers in a miniature wave and said, “hi.” I half-expected her to look away, perhaps move to her mother’s other side so that she felt protected from a stranger.

But she didn’t. Instead, she instantly smiled, waved, and said “hi” back to me.

I must tell you. The child was so charming that one might be excused if, for a moment, he seriously questioned the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity. At least in her case. And this said simply on the basis of a smile, a wave, and a “hi.”

When my friend and I were finished eating, we stood and put on our coats. Seeing we were about to leave, the girl waved again to me and said, with the same radiant smile, “Bye!”

Once again I was romanced.”Sweetheart,” I said, “Thank you so much for giving me your wonderful smile.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“What’s your name,” I asked, hoping her mother would not object to a strange man speaking to her daughter.

“I’m Lilly,” she said looking me straight in the eye.

I thought it interesting that she did not turn to her mother to ask it was okay to talk with someone she didn’t know. Apparently she’d simply made up her mind to treat me as a friend.

“How old are you, Lilly?” I asked. “Six, seven, ten … maybe?” I purposely misjudged her age just to see if she’d further respond.

“Nooooo,” she laughed. “I’m not ten (the “ten” said emphatically as if she were reprimanding me.). “I’m free” (which, interpreted, meant three).

“Free!” I said. “I really missed it didn’t I?”

“Yes, you missed it by a lot,” she said.

“You have a magnificent daughter; you must be a great mom,” I said turning to Lilly’s mother who was obviously delighting in her child’s capacity to handle herself so confidently.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Bye, Lilly,” I said with another wiggling of my fingers.

“Bye,” Lilly said again. And my friend and I left the restaurant … reluctantly.

I’m sure you can tell that I had loved this exchange in the restaurant, that it had generated a sense of joy in me. A 73-year-old man and a “free”-year-old girl had connected for a moment. There’d been no discussion about world news, the latest problems at church, or the newest iPad. I have those conversations all the time. No, this was different: just a few seconds of spontaneous, innocent friendliness. The kind of thing you wished you could experience more.

There are those times—often brief and unexpected—when you get a hint of another world where there is unmitigated beauty, love, peace, and joy. My moment with Lilly was one of those times.

But soon, I fear, Lilly will not be so responsive to a stranger.

When Lilly turns 13 (free-teen?), she may come to that restaurant with her friends, and not even notice that an old man sits nearby. And, if that man is smart, he will say nothing, not even “hi.” His intentions could be too easily misunderstood.

Should Lilly turn 23 and come into that restaurant, she might say “hi” to an old man but assume that he is too advanced in years to be any kind of a threat. Why, she might even hold the door for him if he’s leaving. But, on the other hand, if he’s a much younger man, she will become instinctively cautious and take care to send no ambiguous signals. At her age, she knows how quickly things can go wrong.

When Lilly reaches 43 and stops by the restaurant, she might respond courteously to the man who says “hi,” but she will be wary until she feels assured that he is not seeking the wrong kind of companionship. If she returns his “hi,” she is likely to do it politely, but in such a way as to indicate that the conversation will go no further.

As I was getting into my car, it occurred to me that within a year or two Lilly’s mother will find it necessary to say to her “Don’t talk to strangers; run if anyone you don’t know approaches you.” And Lilly’s charming manner will begin to take on a dimension of fear and mistrust.

We all understand these protocols. They have been forged in a society that can be unpredictable, dangerous, and lonely.

Every evening the news is filled with the horror of murders, bombings, rapes, and abductions.Violence of every kind dominates the subject matter of prime time TV. Bullying is now a subject of national dialogue. Children are routinely trained in the procedures of school lockdowns and what to do if someone starts spraying their classroom with bullets. What are parents supposed to do but teach their children to be on their guard … all the time?

In his story, The Plague, Albert Camus writes of a North African city that has been quarantined because of a deadly pestilence that has killed hundreds. It is Christmas time, and a doctor in the midst of his endless work of treating patients pauses for a moment to reflect on how awful things have become.

“A loveless world,” he thinks, “is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work and devotion to duty and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”

Soon, Lilly will begin to discover that she lives in a world that can be pretty “loveless.”

You may think that my little restaurant story is over the top, that I have made too big a deal out of a serendipitous encounter between myself and a little girl. But I would suggest that we might pause and see in that tiny interchange a certain sense of what all human relationships were once meant to be: joyous, cheerful, affirming, encouraging, building.

A tad of all those things were there in that coffee shop. Lilly responded to the moment, and so did I. We were both created to want more of those kinds of encounters. We were created to make more of those encounters possible.

The Bible tells us that two people lived in a garden and understood and delighted in each other perfectly, even to the core of the soul. Apparently, there were no secrets, no shames, no hidden agendas. There was simply the unrestrained gladness of two people living in perfect synchrony. How much fun they must have had! What great conversations they must have shared. What beauty they must have enjoyed. They must have experienced a “continuous spontaneity” not dissimilar to my delightful moment with Lilly.

But something went awry. It all started with a very bad decision. There followed the evasion, the blaming, and the subsequent divisions of labor that birthed the kind of confusion and conflict that has existed ever since. The result? Fewer “Lilly-moments.” What a terrible loss!

Let me take this just one step further. It occurs to me that a happy moment between an older man and a beautiful child could be (could be, please understand) not only a reminder of something that once was. But something that still should be. And—this is the keeper—something that—in a great and glorious Day to come—will always be.

Know what? Meeting Lilly in the restaurant the other day gave me the tiniest grain of insight into what heaven may be like.