I’ve always been a fan of Mr. Rogers, and I highly recommend the new documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” about his life.

The documentary includes a clip from Fred Rogers’s commencement address to Middlebury College in 2001. During the speech, Mr. Rogers invited the graduates to think of those people who had believed in them and helped them reach this moment. He reminded the graduates: “From the time you were very little, you’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving.” Then, he allowed a minute of silence for them to think of those special people.

Mr. Rogers drew on the work of developmental psychologists in the creation of his TV show, so he knew the importance of mirroring and imitating to the development of young children.

Babies begin to learn a sense of self and connection based on the facial expressions of their parents. Babies and parents mimic one another’s emotional expressions, and when a parent mirrors the emotions of the baby there is an empathetic connection. From a very early age we are quite literally talked into talking and smiled into smiling.

The importance of this mirroring connection was demonstrated in a 1975 experiment called the “Still Face Experiment” conducted by Edward Tronick and his colleagues. In the experiment a mother was asked to stop mirroring her child for three minutes and keep a still face in response. Predictably, the child became distressed when their mother did not mirror them. Without empathetic mirroring, they felt momentarily cut off and out of sync.

This kind of emotional resonance and mirroring is important throughout our life and not just in childhood. In fact, it’s built into our brains.

For example, have you ever yawned when you’ve seen someone else yawn? Or have you become thirsty when you see someone else having a refreshing drink of water? According to Daniel Siegel, a clinical psychiatrist from UCLA, this is because the mirror neurons in our brain react to the intentional acts of others. So we are not only smiled into smiling. We are sometimes yawned into yawning.

These neurons help us to anticipate the actions of others and resonate with their feelings. When someone mirrors our emotions, it gives us the sense of feeling felt or being understood.

Perhaps you’ve heard that couples who have been married for many years begin to look like each other. According to Siegel there’s some physiological truth to this. He writes, “They have reflected each other’s expressions so frequently and so accurately that the hundreds of tiny muscle attachments to their skin have reshaped their faces to mirror their union.”

About 2000 years ago the Apostle Paul said that something similar happens to us in our relationship with God. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, he wrote, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

To put this another way, Paul is saying that as we gaze at God’s glory and as we mirror what we see there we are being transformed into what we see by the power of the Spirit. In Romans 8:29, he similarly says we are being “conformed to the image” of Jesus.

As we gaze at Jesus, we begin to smile at the things he smiles at. We begin to weep over the things he grieves. As we dwell in the love of God in Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit works in us to love as he loves.

We are loved into loving by many special people. When a person weeps with us or rejoices with us, we are transformed.

Likewise and even more so, God transforms us from one degree of glory to another as we begin to resonate with the image of Jesus Christ. God forgives us into forgiving, blesses us into blessing, and loves us into loving. May you sense God’s love resonating within you this day!

Written for the Brodhead Free Press and the Independent Register as part of their weekly “Pastor’s Corner” column.