Looking In God’s Mirror
Have you ever been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, "surely I can't look that old?" The story which follows has been widely circulated, but I love still it :
I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist. I noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 37 years ago. Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on, way back then?
Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate. Hmmm..., or could he?
After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High School.
"Yes. Yes, I did. I'm a Mustang," he gleamed with pride.
"When did you graduate?" I asked.
He answered, "In 1971. Why do you ask?"
"You were in my class!" I exclaimed.
He looked at me closely. Then, that ugly, wrinkled old man asked, "What did you teach?"
It's so easy, isn't it, to see the faults in someone else? We see their wrinkles. We see their gray hair. Even more than that, we see all the "specks" in their eyes. ( Matthew 7:3) But we are not so quick to notice those same flaws in ourselves.
When I was young, I was determined to change the world and make it a better place. As I grew older, I realized that was an unrealistic goal and re-committed myself to changing the people around me. Now, that I've gotten a little bit older (and grayer) I still want to try to influence people around me, but I have learned that, ultimately, the only person I can change is me, and there is plenty about me that still needs to be changed.
James compares reading the Word of God with looking in a mirror: "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 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; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 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 1:22-25 )
May we truly view the Word of God, not as a microscope to examine the lives of others, but as a mirror to search into our own hearts and lives. adapted from email article
May I never forget that a better world starts with a better me. The best way I can change me is to allow Jesus to live through me and the best way I can change others is to set such an example before them that they will want to be like the Savior they see living in me. “God is Love.” So, when God lives in me, Love live in me. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” ( John 13: 35 ) Only love will make me a better person and the world a better place.
