A Look in the Mirror

When is the last time you looked in the mirror? For most of us, it hasn’t been long. On one of my recent international trips, the place I stayed had no mirrors. Other than using the camera mode on my phone, I hadn’t really looked at myself during my stay. When we reached the airport for our return flight, I used the restroom with another lady from my team. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and noticed my curls were running wild. When I commented on how my hair was having a crazy day, my friend laughed and informed me my hair had looked like that the whole trip. Without a mirror, I did not have the opportunity to assess myself and make any necessary fixes.

When we look in a mirror we see our reflection. It shows us what we look like.  Not the image we have created in our head, be it good or bad, but our true self.

When we look in the mirror we are able to make adjustments. If we have food in our teeth, we can take it out. If our hair is out of place, we can fix it.

When we look in the mirror we have an understanding of who we are. Even when we walk away, we still know our features – the color of our eyes, the shape of our face, the texture of our hair.

The Bible compares looking in the mirror to applying the truth to our lives. God’s Word is our spiritual mirror. Just like a physical mirror, we have to look in God’s Word to see our reflection, make necessary adjustments, and know who we really are.

So when is the last time you spent time looking in the spiritual mirror? Do you know who you are in God? Do you see the things in your life that need to change? Do you know where you are in your walk? Do you see what God is doing? Do you know what He is calling you to? Or are you like me on my recent trip, oblivious to what you actually look like.

God tells us when we look into His Word it needs to be intently. When you only have a quick glance at something, you may not remember all the details, but when you look closely and study something you know it completely.

Looking intently is not always easy. Just like each of us has physical features that we would like to change when we look closely at our soul through the mirror of God’s Word we will see things we don’t like. We will see things we need to change. We will see things that we wish were different. But we will also see grace. We will know God’s unconditional love. We will see His healing power. We will experience His Spirit transforming and changing us.

Looking in the mirror is not something we do once a year or even once a week. It is something we do every day, multiple times a day. In the same way, we need to be consistently in God’s Word, looking intently, and seeing our true reflection.

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For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
James 1:23-25 NASB