MIRRORS

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

I’ll tell you what I see…

Brown skin made darker by the exposure to sun. I have a wicked farmers tan that has managed to stay on me for longer than I can remember. Today, as I looked into the mirror I saw a scruffy jet-black beard and cow-licked hair. Bloodshot, dazed brown eyes.

Oh, how could I forget my beauty mark? The one thing that I haven’t been able to escape as long as I’ve know, that thing that has cause questions and ridicule through out my life; the mole on the tip of my nose.

What I see is not beauty. I see imperfections, things that I wouldn’t think twice about changing. I wish a was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller… ha ha. Seriously though, I look and many times I ask my self, what if I looked different?

And then, I keep staring. Looking deeper into my soul and I see scars, brokenness and all things horrible. I see a coward. My past is staring at me with the memories of stupid mistakes. Memories of self-indulgence and dirty works. I’m ugly!

Instead of the “warm fuzzies” that as a child gave away so freely I’ve been busy handing out “cold pricklies” because for the life of me it seems that I can give nothing more than that.

Mirrors aren’t supposed to lie. They are a reflection of your current and present state of being. Mirrors show you the imperfections and the not so imperfect. Mirrors always speak the truth. Yet, as I inspected the mirror closely I realized that mirrors get dirty, blurry, even broken and the show us a distorted image of who we are.

1 Corinthians 13 is commonly know as the Chapter of Love. It gives a very accurate and complete definition of what love is but in verse 12 talks about a mirror… “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

I love how the NLT version puts it, “puzzling reflections in a mirror.”

Puzzling because in the inner most part of my soul I know that what I see is not what I was intended to be. Puzzling because I know that the ugliness, not just the exterior appearance but the inner ugliness in me is not what God created me to be.

Christine Caine tweeted, “How long will you continue to forsake your destiny because you are so fixated on your history? It’s time to move past your past.”

So, you see that right now we see ourselves imperfectly because we only see puzzling reflections of who we are because of our past. We are reminded daily of how ugly we are. Yet, our view of ourselves is not complete because we failed to see ourselves as God sees us.

The partial view of yourself in the mirror is not an absolute reality. Colossians 2:10, 13, 14 states that “you also are complete through your union with Christ… You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.”

Our completeness is found in Christ! God has made you alive! He cancelled the debt of our sins! God has made us complete! Don’t allow the dirty, broken, unreliable mirrors to dictate you perception of what God sees in you.

Mirrors only reflect the present imperfections but God’s love shows us the completeness of who we are because he knows us completely.

BTW… just in case you were wondering, that is me in the picture.

"There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind."

-C.S. Lewis-