I admit that I really don’t like mirrors. I guess that is not uncommon for a 48 year old woman. A few weeks ago my husband and I were watching a television show and began discussing how old a singer looked, we felt sorry for her, but then we learned that she was actually two years younger than us. We paused….silence…then slowly turned to look at each other for a moment when my husband said, “you don’t think we actually look as old as she does, do you?” I assured him that we were much more well preserved and that we couldn’t possibility look that old. That began a thought process for me. I started noticing others my age looking older…and older. “Those poor ladies” I thought to myself; I felt sorry for them. Then it happened. I spend a little time in front of the mirror. I noticed the crop of grey hair (my sweet husband calls them my “wings”), the sagging double chin, the extra lines on my face. It was a reality check. I began to think about moisturizing more, a new hair cut, etc. But, the idea of self examination in a spiritual way became more significant when a day or so later I heard a sister criticize another sister for a spiritual flaw. I quickly began to think about my pesky mirror. Our Father likes mirrors: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.” James 1: 22-24. Our Father’s instructions are clear, we must be aware of our own flaws first and foremost. Jesus explained it this way: “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye” Luke 6:42. Each of these passages tells us to consider our own situations before we start to criticize others. That is the obvious lesson here and one we’ve heard before. But, I would also ask you to consider that there is another lesson here: empathy. You will recall in John 8 our Savior wrote something in the sand when the adulterous woman was to be stoned by the scribes and the Pharisees. Sermons have been built around the wonderings of what He wrote in the sand. But our Father chose not to tell us, so it must not have been important, or maybe even our business. What was important was what He said. He spoke to the sins of all who were there- the woman He told her to stop it, and as for the accusers, He and asked them to look in a mirror “He who is without sin among you, cast the first stone.” However, what is too often ignored is their response: “those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last” v 8. It is as if they took a look, saw their own wrinkles, grey hair, and saggy double chin and realized their own inadequacies.
I don’t care for mirrors, for many reasons, but they have a purpose. However, for those who are followers of Christ the most important mirror of all is the perfect law of liberty that with our obedience has the power to transform. But only if we are willing to look into it, the word and inward into our hearts for a glorious transformation that will never decay: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory”
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