Mirrors

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” –James 1:23-24

There are a lot of things that I see when I look in the mirror. I see food that may have gotten stuck in my teeth. I see the grayish/white hairs that grow in my goatee. I see whether my eyebrows need to be ‘tamed’ or not. Sometimes, I still even see the onset of acne. Often times I will take a look at what I am wearing and realize that I don’t like the way that it looks. Believe it or not, this will bother me so badly that even an hour later, I will go in and change, because I’ve just been thinking about it the whole time. It isn’t always pleasant what I see, but you had better bet that it leads to self awareness.

So if what we see in our physical mirrors when we look into them, how much more should we remember what we see when we look into our spiritual mirrors, the Word of God? When we look into the Word, we see our shortcomings and our character flaws, but we also should see us through the lenses of grace at work in our lives. We see that we aren’t who we used to be anymore, but that in Christ we are a new creation. We aren’t to act the way that we used to act. We are now a holy people.

Look deeply into Scripture. See who God has created you to be. Notice the details. Be familiar with your shortcomings, but also with God’s grace. Now don’t forget what you look like in God’s sight. As you go about your life, live out what you saw in the Word.