Mirror...Mirror...

I just have to share with you a traumatic occurrence in my life! I had put off confronting it for many months but last week I finally had to do it. I went shopping for clothes. The sales were great so I picked out a few things that I liked from the sales rack. The pleasant lady in the store took my selection and asked if she could "start a room" for me. I handed the clothes over to her and after a few more picks I went into the dressing room that she had “started”. First off I noticed that my hair was a mess and why did I wear those shoes and black socks of all things? I began to undress so I could try on the new duds and that is when I noticed that the store had replaced ordinary mirrors with distorted ones, you know, the kind that makes you laugh at the county fair. I appeared much shorter and much wider, my legs “appeared” to have a bad case of cellulite and I was sure I saw the map of Illinois on one of my thighs. I contributed it all to really, really bad lighting and went ahead to try on my first item. The slacks that hung so beautifully on the “dummy” would only go to my knees, I quickly checked the size. After seeing it was indeed my size, I was sure that someone had put the wrong size or perhaps it was just the cut of the trousers. Okay next item! Ohhhhh, I didn’t know I had age spots on my back that would dwarf a good size saucer or maybe that too was the lighting! I dressed in the next outfit and decided that I should try another mirror so I went out to the three-way mirror outside the dressing rooms, I was sure the lighting was better out there! To my horror, both mirrors were really bad I thought. “Can I help you find another size, the now “so getting on my nerves” pleasant lady asked. As she was standing beside me in the distorted mirror, amazingly looking normal, I had to come to grips with the truth. I had gained weight in all the wrong places! Almost in tears, I carried my larger clothing to the check out, pledging to lose weight. I reasoned it would be a healthy thing for the new year and would probably help my cholesterol numbers, which seemed to be higher on every trip to the doctor. I even took a run through the exercise clothes section but decided that my ego could not stand trying on the spandex outfits.

After paying for my items, I found my husband who I am sure wondered about my quietness on the way home. In an effort to cheer me up, he announced that what we needed was an ice cream from the DQ and at that I forgot about the awful images that I had just witnessed in the distorted store mirrors. He was right, I cheered up and ordered myself a hot fudge sundae, if I could have super sized it I would have. As the creamy delight slid down my throat, the images quickly faded from my memory.

I find myself doing this same thing when I read the word of God sometimes. I see truth that makes me uncomfortable or seems too hard to apply to my life and I want to turn away and forget what I saw. It seems too hard because I forget who the image in the mirror is to God and how he will help me do anything he asks me to do. That’s when I need to reread James and what he says about not merely listening to the word of God but doing it.

James 1:22-25

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 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. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it---he will be blessed in what he does.

Memories of that awful event are fading and are nothing that DQ can’t fix but I never want to read His word and turn away. I want to devour his words and do what they say. I want to remember that the mirrors at the clothing store can give me a wake up call but I also want to remember that the person in the mirror is a Child of the King and loved so much that he died for my sins and I can do all things through Him who gave himself for me. Hallelujah!